This is a detailed post.. Please bear with me
We are a very small IT company with pretty good employee retention record. We have very liberal HR policy and benefits. Recently, we hired a developer who went on leave within 2.5 months of his service citing death of a close relative. He never communicated the return date and when we contacted him after almost 2 weeks, he gave a random date when he would resume work. When he did not show up for work on the date given by him, we contacted him again and were told that he is himself in a hospital for some treatment and that the treatment would last for 8 weeks. While we are still giving him the benefit of doubt, we are pretty sure he is absconding and will never come back.
We sent him an email and gave him the option to either furnish proof of his medical condition and continue his employment with us (Unpaid Leave) OR resign on medical grounds, after providing the proof of his medical condition, in which case we are willing to waive his notice period and relieve him of his duties gracefully. As you can imagine, we never received a response. Because of his unprofessional behaviour, we have incurred a significant financial loss (for a company our size). We could not bill our client for his services since our agreement with client says that newly hired employees must be trained first and cannot be billed for 2 months. We paid him 2.5 months of salary, relocation expenses, Health insurance reimbursement and recruiter's fees which was 1 month salary. So basically we are out 3.5 months of his pay and more. Our employment offer letter has the following for clauses when an employee decides to leave
1. Financial reimbursement equivalent to notice period salary if employee doesn't serve the notice period
2. Training expenses (2 months salary) if the employee quits within 1 year
3. Moonlighting Clause - Employee cannot accept employment elsewhere while actively employed with us
We do not have any bond signed on stamp paper. All of this is in the employment offer letter and each clause is signed individually by the employee. we know that we can file a civil suit but would like to avoid legal hassles as much as possible. We have decided to keep him on our payroll, on unpaid leave, until he completes his exit formalities. We are going to send him few more reminders and requests to resume but it's doubtful that he will respond to them. My questions are
-- Is it legal for us to contact his future employers and make them aware that he is still employed with us?
-- This is a long shot but Is there a database where i can report him so that future employers can find out about what he did?
-- I hired him through a recruiter. Do recruiters have some sort of database for such employees?
I know people will tell me to forget about it and move on but this guy has caused us a significant financial loss, not to mention a loss of goodwill with our client (They were pissed off when we said the guy has left. They think we might have treated him unfairly).
Any suggestions are appreciated.
Thanks and Happy Hiring !!
From India, Ahmedabad
We are a very small IT company with pretty good employee retention record. We have very liberal HR policy and benefits. Recently, we hired a developer who went on leave within 2.5 months of his service citing death of a close relative. He never communicated the return date and when we contacted him after almost 2 weeks, he gave a random date when he would resume work. When he did not show up for work on the date given by him, we contacted him again and were told that he is himself in a hospital for some treatment and that the treatment would last for 8 weeks. While we are still giving him the benefit of doubt, we are pretty sure he is absconding and will never come back.
We sent him an email and gave him the option to either furnish proof of his medical condition and continue his employment with us (Unpaid Leave) OR resign on medical grounds, after providing the proof of his medical condition, in which case we are willing to waive his notice period and relieve him of his duties gracefully. As you can imagine, we never received a response. Because of his unprofessional behaviour, we have incurred a significant financial loss (for a company our size). We could not bill our client for his services since our agreement with client says that newly hired employees must be trained first and cannot be billed for 2 months. We paid him 2.5 months of salary, relocation expenses, Health insurance reimbursement and recruiter's fees which was 1 month salary. So basically we are out 3.5 months of his pay and more. Our employment offer letter has the following for clauses when an employee decides to leave
1. Financial reimbursement equivalent to notice period salary if employee doesn't serve the notice period
2. Training expenses (2 months salary) if the employee quits within 1 year
3. Moonlighting Clause - Employee cannot accept employment elsewhere while actively employed with us
We do not have any bond signed on stamp paper. All of this is in the employment offer letter and each clause is signed individually by the employee. we know that we can file a civil suit but would like to avoid legal hassles as much as possible. We have decided to keep him on our payroll, on unpaid leave, until he completes his exit formalities. We are going to send him few more reminders and requests to resume but it's doubtful that he will respond to them. My questions are
-- Is it legal for us to contact his future employers and make them aware that he is still employed with us?
-- This is a long shot but Is there a database where i can report him so that future employers can find out about what he did?
-- I hired him through a recruiter. Do recruiters have some sort of database for such employees?
I know people will tell me to forget about it and move on but this guy has caused us a significant financial loss, not to mention a loss of goodwill with our client (They were pissed off when we said the guy has left. They think we might have treated him unfairly).
Any suggestions are appreciated.
Thanks and Happy Hiring !!
From India, Ahmedabad
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