Leaving job without notice

Lincoln75

Member
Had a bloke walk out on me one Friday Lunchtime. Grabbed his lunch bag and got in his car to go home.
I told him that if he did so, that he wasn’t to come back on the Monday. He just left anyway.
On the Monday, I rang the FSB (Federation of Small Businesses) who said I shouldn’t have said so to him and that he should have been given 3 written warnings over a 3 month period for the same misdemeanour, before I told to not come back.

Fortunately for me, he didn’t come back. I then immediately took it upon myself to make sure he was fully paid up to date including any outstanding holiday, stating in an accompanying letter that he had voluntarily left of his own accord.

He was less than 6 months away from retirement. I have subsequently learned that it has been pointed out to him that he was a fool to himself and that had let a hissy fit take the better of him that day. To which he agreed!

I’ve literally had nightmares of him turning up for work in the morning and woken up in a sweat, only to realise that it was an actual nightmare. Thank God this happened 2&1/2 years ago and he really is retired now, so cannot come back.

When you get somebody so awkward as that, who literally makes your own job unnecessarily difficult, let alone a misery, they are best gone! I haven’t looked back since, without realising just how much better life is without him. Everything is now done properly by me and our repairs bill having dropped like a stone. I don’t mind the extra work and actually enjoy the satisfaction that it is done exactly the way I want it to and properly too.
Telling him not to come back was a bad move , its constructive dismissal , it would have been better if he had come back and you let him , I`d get legal advice off an employment lawyer , not FSB , and ask hows best to tidy this up before he has you in a tribunal for constructive dismissal .
 

Two Tone

Member
Mixed Farmer
Telling him not to come back was a bad move , its constructive dismissal , it would have been better if he had come back and you let him , I`d get legal advice off an employment lawyer , not FSB , and ask hows best to tidy this up before he has you in a tribunal for constructive dismissal .
Thank goodness it is too late on his behalf now then, isn’t it?
Also the fact that he was witnessed by other refusing to do a simple, reasonable task I had set him, then telling everybody that he was off.

The fact was that it was midday on a Friday and he obviously wanted (though didn’t ask) to be off home by 3pm.
We were carting hay, but had had a problem with the baler the day before. About 30 conventional bales needed re-baling. He had been sat in his tractor since 11am, waiting for me to load other trailers and return back to the yard with the loader to unload them all. When I asked him to unhitch his trailer and put the baler back on his tractor, he point blank refused and grabbed his lunch bag a walked off to his car.
I knew the rebaling would still allow him to go home before 3pm. We actually did so it his absence by 2pm. And carted all the re-baled and the rest of the bales by 3pm.
With regards written warnings, he had already had 3, but for different causes stretched over 22 years.

No matter what the rules and laws of the land are, we simply cannot have somebody tell their employer/senior staff what they will and will not do, expecting some sort of harmonious work relationship to continue.
It comes to something when everybody tells you that they could not understand how I had put up with him for so long!

Anyway, incident closed, good riddance, did us all a huge favour. Though I’m pretty sure he thought he was going to make my life even harder to be without him. When the complete reverse turned out to be the reality.
In effect, he’d hung himself.

As for FSB, they offer excellent free legal advice for its members, in this case using professional Employment Lawyer.
 
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Robt

Member
Location
Suffolk
You’d think so, but plenty are at it and not just Ag. My nephew works for an electrical engineering company and all self employed. I only found out when he recently ruptured his Achilles and will be off for at least 3 months and said he’d got no sick pay or insurance cover .
How did he get the injury? At work or at play?
 
Location
southwest
Someone working in a farm shop asked boss for reference, went for interview with a big company and didn't get the job , poor timekeeping was mentioned in the reference and the big company said it was not allowed and it should be sorted. Cost the reference writer several grand to sort out of court.
Even if it's true you can't write a bad reference, you just don't write one

If there's no written record of an employee being reprimanded for poor time keeping, then, in the eyes of the law they've never been late.

I once had to sack a chap for poor time keeping-it was a long process.

Recorded meeting where he was told persistent lateness was not acceptable.

Then late (by more than 15 minutes) 3 time for a Verbal Warning

Another 3 lates for a written warning

Three more for a Final warning

Three more-dismissal.
 

Lincoln75

Member
If there's no written record of an employee being reprimanded for poor time keeping, then, in the eyes of the law they've never been late.

I once had to sack a chap for poor time keeping-it was a long process.

Recorded meeting where he was told persistent lateness was not acceptable.

Then late (by more than 15 minutes) 3 time for a Verbal Warning

Another 3 lates for a written warning

Three more for a Final warning

Three more-dismissal.
Its painful , It used to be you could send them on their way with no reason in the first two years , has that changed ?
 

Sharpy

Member
Livestock Farmer
I had a situation 3 or 4 years ago where my employee just stopped turning up, fortunately I called ACAS which is free and impartial, they pointed out the correct way to deal with it.
ACAS is for both employees and employers, have since heard a few horror stories of people not following the correct procedure.
 
A load of absolutely crap advice in this thread
  • You can't withhold payment or garnish wages
  • Give them their P45 and take into account any accrued holiday and put that against their notice period
  • You maybe be able to claim the costs of getting a replacement to cover their notice period, but you're going to have to take them to court to get it and can you really be bothered?
  • Ask yourself, why did this person leave without notice, did I make the wrong hiring decision? Am I paying to little and they got a better offer? Is my farm a bad working environment? Or were they just a tosser
Surely there is an action between bullet points 1 and 2 or reducing any potential constructive dismissal claims by allowing a cooling off period before giving them their P45? And make a record, preferably confirm in writing any discussions and subsequent decisions.
 

Lincoln75

Member
The contract would then be illegal, you can't put conditions in contract that suit you if they are not within employment laws, unless you enjoy paying huge fines.
 

toquark

Member
I sacked a guy a few years ago who was basically unable to get along with anybody else. This led to other (good) staff refusing to work with him and threatening to leave so something had to be done. I had a hell of a time putting his written warnings on paper without reverting to “he said this and she said that”. It boiled down to the fact that guy was basically just an arse but you can’t say that without facing a tribunal and this chap would certainly have gone there.

Sacking people is a total minefield. In the end I let him go after his various warnings etc and paid him to the end of the month in the hope I never heard from him again. It worked for a week. He then rang me up looking for a reference! It was the shortest reference in history which said “X worked here from Y until Z”.
 

Lincoln75

Member
Reading between the lines many employers think they are always in the right because they pay the wages , clearly this is not the case , you dont own someone because they work for you , some employers need to step back and ask themselves why they have a high turnover of staff , they can rest assured it isnt because conditions and pay are too good.
I remember some cpatain of industry once saying always employ the best people you can afford , not the cheapest as its false economy.
 

PSQ

Member
Arable Farmer
I think the rules say you cannot give a bad reference. You end up saying things like, "you will never know just how lucky you are to get this guy to work for you" you are not allowed to add "he never bloody well worked for me". Word gets around all the same.
Every reference I've been asked to give has been via a phone call, and you can be as honest as you like when it's not in black and white.

I had one guy leave mid harvest because he decided that he didn't want to "work Thursdays after 5" because it was "takeaway night", and he'd been offered an "easier job" at a grain store (he lasted a week before he was fired).

He continued to list me as a reference for the next 3 years...
 

Nearly

Member
Location
North of York
I sacked a guy a few years ago who was basically unable to get along with anybody else. This led to other (good) staff refusing to work with him and threatening to leave so something had to be done. I had a hell of a time putting his written warnings on paper without reverting to “he said this and she said that”. It boiled down to the fact that guy was basically just an arse but you can’t say that without facing a tribunal and this chap would certainly have gone there.

Sacking people is a total minefield. In the end I let him go after his various warnings etc and paid him to the end of the month in the hope I never heard from him again. It worked for a week. He then rang me up looking for a reference! It was the shortest reference in history which said “X worked here from Y until Z”.
One word less "X attended from Y until Z.
 

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Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

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quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

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