Document Employee — Termination for Smoking
|
Termination |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
We have gone to no smoking at our company. We have employees leaving the property to smoke and not clocking out. Can we fire these individuals for not following company policy? What should we put in our employee handbook?
The employer is absolutely within his or her rights to fire an employee who is on the clock, but away from the premises. In many cases, this would be considered falsification of company documents (time clock records), lying, violation of time clock procedures or misrepresentation. Those items may already be cause for immediate termination under your current employee handbook.
Employees may be assuming that since the company is now non-smoking, it’s okay for them to leave the property to get their nicotine fix. In fairness to employees, since this is a new policy, you might want to issue written reprimands before firing the workers.
It might also be prudent to issue a memo to all employees with paychecks, reminding them that there is no smoking on the property, and that being off the property while on the clock (or on unauthorized breaks) is cause for disciplinary action or immediate termination. When you update the employee handbook, it should simply add “Being away from the premises (not on company business) while clocked in” under reasons for immediate dismissal.
This may be a power play. Some employees may be thinking, “Ha! If they won’t let us smoke on the property, we’ll show them! We’ll smoke elsewhere!” You’ll need to firmly remind employees that this is not an option. Realistically, when a company institutes a no smoking policy, they often lose a few employees who are just too addicted to make the switch.
This entry was posted
on Wednesday, May 28th, 2008 at 11:11 am and is filed under
Termination.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Leave a Reply
-
Ask a Question
Categories
- Attendance Management (1077)
- Benefits (1570)
- Compensation (1698)
- Employment Training (311)
- Hiring and Staffing (830)
- Human Resources Management (2864)
- Labor Laws (1108)
- Management / Leadership Development (342)
- Performance Management (208)
- Structural Development (41)
- Termination (575)
- Workplace Health & Safety (271)
- Workplace Management (426)
Blogroll
Archives
- July 2010
- June 2010
- May 2010
- April 2010
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- August 2007
- July 2007
- June 2007
Recent Posts
-
Cigarette Smoking Workplace
July 31st, 2010 -
Caring for Legally Blind Spouse
July 30th, 2010 -
FMLA vs STD
July 28th, 2010 -
Joining 1st break with lunch break
July 27th, 2010 -
definition of “extended leave”
July 26th, 2010 -
vacation time remaining
July 26th, 2010 -
working more than scheduled
July 26th, 2010
Pages