Firing employees for job abandonment

Q: Two of our employees were scheduled to return to work, but we haven’t heard from them, and neither has responded to our emails. At what point can we fire them for job abandonment?

Assuming they’re at-will employees, they can be fired at any time for any reason, so long as it isn’t an illegal reason. Firing an employee for job abandonment is a legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason.

Employees abandon their jobs when they intentionally stop showing up for scheduled shifts but fail to inform the employer of their decision to quit. However, you can’t simply assume employees have abandoned their position. In some cases, they may have valid reasons for both failing to show up for scheduled shifts and being unable to respond to inquiries.

So before firing them, you should give them a reasonable amount of time to show up or contact you. Although a “reasonable” amount of time varies from state to state, you can generally conclude they’ve abandoned their job after missing three consecutive working days with no contact.

During the three working days, it’s important to continually attempt to contact them via phone, email, and any other reasonable means of communication to ensure they’re given plenty of opportunities to respond. You should also document every absence and attempted communication in their personnel files.