Our offices hear from no shortage of companies who are involved in unnecessary disputes of various kinds with disgruntled former employees.  Often these ex-employees were fired; discharged for good cause.

Many of the cases we hear involve employees who have been found to be negligent or abusive in rendering resident care, have utilized the workplace as some type of personal headquarters and in other cases the person has just been lazy.

We have intimate knowledge of one assisted living scenario where an employee would drag a mattress from the basement in order to create a place to sleep on a midnight shift when he should have been awake.  Now that is lazy.

Where the stress comes in for some employers is their refusal to put in place a system of employee review and documentation which keeps track of performance concerns and accomplishments and which can be used to satisfy inquiries from unemployment compensation and labor relations departments in your state.

Documentation must include:

Evidence of employee neglecting duties with specificity
Evidence of resident complaints in assisted living with great detail and exact quotations
Exact comments from other employees who have witnessed any inappropriate behavior

In some instances employees will really fly off the deep end.  We know of one sitaution where the laziness was so extreme that once the employee’s schedule was curtailed, they began to phone the assisted living residence with idle threats against the employer.  Once confronted the employee, about to be fired, denied even calling the facility on his day off.  Problem is his claims did not match the caller i.d. which showed multiple calls on their day off which proved they were lying.  Of course the caller i.d. record was preserved to ensure this person has no legal claim against the company regardless of their denials and to prove their capacity for lying.

Who knows why people do what they do?  From those who have elevated opinions of their own value to those obsessed with the emptiness of material possessions, let’s face it the world is full of all types.  The insecure may be the most annoying and potentially the most dangerous.

Our focus is not to try and explain human behavior but to assist you as an employer in the care business to stay better prepared to respond to serious employee issues.  To that end this edition of Monday Morning Wisdom includes an Employee Evaluation Form with sample language as well as an Employee Infraction Form.  Hopefully the language used will be helpful to you, although we are not qualified to provide legal advice.  For advice on managing specific situations contact an attorney who practices labor law in your area of operation.

Let’s be fair with those we employ and commit to quality staff training and development.  At the same time we must protect our companies from the crowd looking for an easy buck while not working hard to do the job.