By BLR Founder and CEO Bob Brady
BLR’s CEO discusses lies, good deeds, and what his organization did about both, then asks for your solution to the issues this story raises.
Do you ever read the popular newspaper column, The Ethicist? It’s an advice column focused on ethical issues. This is certainly something that our too-often-rudderless society needs, and I read it regularly, though I’m often surprised and perplexed by the advice offered. For example, almost every time there’s a question involving the workplace, I end up wondering what planet the columnist lives on.
A reader recently recounted the story of a co-worker who claimed she was suffering from cancer. She asked for and was granted leave, and the employer, as an accommodation, asked her co-workers to team up and get her work done. The co-workers did so.
It later developed that the employee had fabricated the whole cancer story, leaving everyone understandably upset and angry. One of the co-workers wrote the Ethicist asking for advice. It didn’t seem right that she had done extra work for her deceptive co-worker. What remedies were available?
The Ethicist’s advice? The employer should give time off to the co-workers to compensate them for the extra work they had done! In other words, the employer should be the one to bear the brunt of the deception.
What We Do … and We Would Have Done
I’m just an aging curmudgeon, but this leaves me dazed. Shouldn’t the lying employee also be held responsible and be fired or disciplined? Wasn’t the employer victimized as much or more than the fellow employees? Did the Ethicist simply forget to include consequences for the perpetrator of the lie? What is going on?
The employer’s response to the dishonest employee’s initial request – asking co-workers to team up and help out while she dealt with her health issues — is similar to what we usually do at BLR when an employee is faced with a family need. It is often better than hiring a temporary replacement (with the risk of having to terminate him or her later on when the employee comes back), and sometimes it’s just not possible to find someone with the right set of skills quickly enough to deal with an emergency absence.
Co-workers are usually supportive, whether out of sympathy and support for their colleague, an expectation that their turn will come some time in the future, or simple resignation and acceptance of cruel fate. Sometimes people have to put in some extra time and sometimes it means that we just don’t get done all the things we would like. (And yes, sometimes this approach just won’t work and we have to hire temporary help to cover gaps.)
What would I have done in this case?
On the surface, with the facts as I know them, I’m pretty sure that if we had faced a similar dilemma—an employee lying about a family or personal emergency—we would take disciplinary action. Termination would not be out of the question. I’m curious how you, our readers, feel about this.
My first question: Do you agree with the advice given in The Ethicist column?
And my second: What do you and your companies do to deal with these needs?
Use the Share Your Comments button to answer, or e-mail me at RBrady@blr.com.
This employee is SO fired, especially if they submitted fraudulent FMLA and/or disability paperwork. (If the employer didnt require supporting documentation prior to approving the time off, then shame on them!) Trust and respect are the basis of the employee/employer relationship; if both are gone, the relationship is over.
I do not feel that the company should be responsible for allowing extra time off to the co-workers who kicked in a little extra effort. The employees who did the extra work should discuss the situation with the worker whom lied. As far as firing the employee whom lied, I would fire them if they were off long enough that they were in violation of our company attendance policy. Since their absence would not be considered excused, I would count every day off as an unexcused absence. My guess is that they were off long enough to be in violation of the policy.
I do not agree with the Ethicist. I believe the employee that lied should have been disciplined. The underlying cause for employee’s lie should determine severity of discipline. For example, if employee’s mother was ill and she wanted to spend time with her but was afraid to ask employer for time off, I would not fire employee but maybe place her/him on probation, write up incident and have employee sign document stating s/he understands employment will be terminated if s/he is dishonest again. But if employee lied just to have time off, or maybe his/her workload was heavy and s/he just wanted to get out of the office for a while so as not to have to work harder than usual. I believe I would terminate the employee. I don’t think lying has to be tolerated by any employer and I don’t think an employee has to receive a warning if s/he has lied. What ever route employer takes, s/he has to remember to treat all employees the same. Dishonesty should also be covered in employee personnel policy and penalties listed in policy should be followed verbatim when employee is dishonest.
as for the employees who performed the lying employee’s job, I don’t believe they should have been compensated. I believe they should know lying employee was disciplined and that’s all they’re entitled to know about the incident. Any good, dedicated employee should not mind helping out another employee or the company on an as-needed basis as long as s/he is not expected to work overtime to do another employee’s job.
This employee is definately fired (based upon the info provided).
However, the question that comes to mind is “How long did this go on before it was uncovered?” Didn’t HR require FMLA documentation prior to approving the leave? It sounds like to me that the prep work was not completed in the beginning. Even if this employee was not eligible for FMLA, documetation should have been required.
Secondly, the morale of the entire team will be low if the employee is not terminated. You will hear things such as “I’m never pitching in again” and rightfully so. So, what should be done for the employees who worked twice as hard? I am assuming they got paid time and one-half for working over 40 hours however, I would terminate the employee, then perhaps purchase a restaurant gift card for dinner-for-two and a note saying “Thank You for Going Above and Beyond and for Making our Team a Success” for each of the workers who chipped in.
The lying employee will be gone, the hard-working employees will feel rewarded and…shame on HR. Let’s get some ground-rules in place to prevent this from happening again.
Wow, is the weather nice on this planet the “Ethicist” comes from? The employer should not be granting time off to other employees for this situation. I can understand catering lunch as a thank you to the employees, but time off is ridiculous! The employee that lied to the company should be disciplined, I would most likely go the route of termination unless there was a good explanation for the misconduct and we reached an agreement on how the employee would make up for it. If I allowed the employee to stay on my payroll, I would require individually-written letters of apology for each member of the team that picked up the extra work while she was out.
Fire the employee that misrepresented the situation. No compensation for those that pitched in. They should take comfort in that they did what they thought was right given the situation as it was presented to them.
It sounds like there is more to meets the eye with all involved.. How did the co-workers know that the employee was dishonest? If supporting FMLA documentation was not requested, Why? it sounds as if the manager involved also needs training and / or follow up disciplinary action for not following procedure and possibly revealing or confirming confidential information outside the realm of business needs. With the entire story, it seems like company HR policies, procedures, and execution for several issues such as gossip, work ethic, FMLA, and possibly other programs need an overhaul. Medical information is confidential information that should not be reviewed by co-workers other then immediate manager and above & HR.
If HR, via confirmed findings through correct research processes, deems that they have been mislead, they should take action with the employee.
As far as having to accomodate the “extra” work because of the employee leave- The co-workers should be available to accomodate with “any” required and necessary “work” or “tasks” needed for the company! they are not taking up the employee’s work, they are supporting their company to ensure daily business is taken care of. Their time should not be spent worrying about other coworkers requests for leave, or what type of “issues” might have caused the request for leave. If a co-worker was told directly by the employee that the employee was being dishonest, then the co-worker needs to report this to HR and go about their business working with HR as needed. If co-workers are hearing it through the “grapevine”, there is evidence of several problems with the system in place.
This wasn’t just a little white lie to get out of a day or two of work, this was a major lie and should definitely be disciplined. We have all had the occasional employee that had the “hooky” day, that needed to have the mental health day; but to lie about having cancer is something entirely different. The other employees aren’t really asking for time off, they just want to see something done about the liar.
The options for discipline are time-off without pay, although I doubt that would do any good since that is what the employee was wanting in the first place, written file insert, requiring written doctor note for all illness related missed work, and/or termination. Laying down rules for written doctor note to everyone in the company, is punishing the entire workforce because of one incident, and wouldn’t be good for morale either. I don’t think I have enough information to know what I would do in this situation, but whatever discipline is handed to this employee, will affect the remaining employees. Giving the other employees time-off tells employees to fake illnesses to get time-off. I wouldn’t think is the message management wants to give to their employees.
What do you do in cases that are less blatant, like the employee who calls in sick and is seen at the mall or comes back from a sick day saying they got all their shopping done the day before?
Last May we were faced with a harassment complaint from several employees against one 22-year tenure employee. The long term employee denied all the complaints against her and we were forced to make a creditablity decision. We found against her and terminated her. The reason was for “dishonesty”, the union has said that they plan to take it to arbitration but I do know that they are shaking in their boots because how do you defend “dishonesty”. Your word is the only thing you have, once lost what do you have? We can work with harassment, we can work with doing your job incorrectly but how do you work with dishonesty? I would fire this person and do something unexpected for all the employees as a thank you and I am sorry you were dupped like we were.
I am shocked how soft some of you are about this. This person didn’t lie about having the flu. She told people she had cancer! (Not to mention she perpetrated that lie for some time, got sympathy from co-workers and got them to do her work, went against company policies, etc.) Someone who would do that has severe emotional issues. What are they going to do next? I cannot imagine a scenerio where I would not fire this person.
How can you make the call what to do in either case (employee’s that assisted and employee that lied) based on information given. Okay – the employee lied about a serious condition. Why?? What was she trying to cover? How long had she been with the company? What was her past record? How much time was involved? What was the impact of those that pulled together to assist? If you make a call with the provided information, you’re a manager. If you don’t make the call with the given information but look for more information to make the call then I think you’re a good manager. I’m not even a ‘manager’ in my company but I think you’d need more information to that could potentially affect the career of one or more human beings. People do things for a reason – address the reason, not the person and I think things will go much better.
Is this employee still a part of this team? How do the other employees relate to this person now that the lie has been revealed? Hasn’t this caused problems within the department? Is there nothing in the handbook regarding morality or honesty? I realize you can’t dictate morals, but Jesus Christ. This is an obvious infraction, if not against the company, then their fellow employees. Believe me that some kind of discipline is needed AND compensatory time for those employees who pitched in during their illegal time off. I believe it only fair that the employeed who lied should be required to cover for the employees who are comped for the time worked in her stead.
re#Lying Employees:
1. My initial response is that under ordinary circumstances HR would need verification from a doctor that the employee is genuinely ill. If this had been done, the lying issue would not have come up at all.
2. As with employment applications, employees are aware that if they lie, they are subject to termination. This employee would be terminated and a suitable replacement hired. If she would lie about something as horrifying as this, she would lie about anything and is not to be trusted.
My first response to the situation was to wonder how the employee was granted leave to begin with. If such an illness did exist, and the employee was asking for extended time off for treatment, where was the verification? Who granted the time off without proper protocol? Some training is needed in that area.. But as is with any situation, there are probably more facts and details involved, that we are not aware of.
My recommended course of action would have been to terminate the employment relationship with the dishonest employee. Regardless of whether or not they had a good excuse for the lies.
My next proposed course of action would be to commend the peers who helped out; and make sure their efforts were recognized in some way, shape or form. Feelings of betrayal aside, such a gesture on their part might not be as quickly repeated, should a similar situation arise, if the extra effort goes unappreciated.
I agree with many comments already made, especially that the manager and organization did not execute due-diligence in requesting evidence of a medical condition. End result for this employee? Discipline and/or termination as determined by company policy, and as allowed by law. As for the coworkers, if they are non-exempt, they are entitled to overtime pay. If exempt, then comp-time is warranted. In either case, these options should have been offered when the request to pick up the slack for an absent co-worker was made.
From my point of View, we can summarize the following issues:
1. Dishonest Employee
2. Employer’s Request to the co-workers
3. Who’s the victim?
Answer 1: Firstly before deciding who is to bear the pain, we need to find out why the employee had to lie. Was it he is habituated of lying or if he had previous bitter experiences with the company’s policily. If the case is the first one then two solutions could be provided: One, if he is in a position where it is hard to find a good replacement then give him soe punishment so that he doesnot repeat in future and others take it as an example. Two, if it is easy to find substitute for his position and as per company and other involved policies this is a real bad thing then simply fire him. In either of the cases, it should be handled professionally not emotionally.
Answer 2: This is quiet natural and humanly to ask co-workers to do what the employer did and if I was in his place would probablly have done the same thing. We are humans not animals. We always talk about being team players, showing helping atttudes. So why should then we be bothered about a bad person’s attitudes. Yeah… we feel bad about what happened even would I. But then how much money/compensation would I ask my boss for it. Just have to take it easily, life is full of suprises.
Answer 3: As for the columist, I would never agree with him. What would have he done if he was the employer. Someone with such excuse asking for leave say him NO? Ask others not to minimize his gap and keep watching…. NO one would do SO..I BET!! Would I personally, if my collegue is out of for emergency not stand my him. If not as a collegue at least as a human. So why all these questions of “Whos is going to bear the pain” Everyone here is a victim the employer and collegues. So rather take it easily and may be the company could arrange for a lunch or dinner with that department and everyone gets a chance to share views and opinions, get ogether and reunite forgetting past injuries.
The Manager should have asked for the supporting documents before sanctioning leave to the employee who had taken leave on false grounds. In case the same had been provided and it was found that the leave was taken on false ground then a dicsiplinary action should be taken depending on the past records on the behaviour for the employee. Means is it the first time he had done this or is it a regular practice for the employee.
In case this is the first instance I would definitely like to have one to one converstaion with the employee to know why he has to make such a story for taking a leave. Is there is genuine problem he is facing wih the team / manager / work or anything related to his personal life.
I don’t think the other employees should be given off for the extra work as it was need of the hour and it was expected from the other team members to keep the work going. But the extra work should also be recorded as special remarks in appraisal forms of other employees.
It’s obvious there’s a concensus from the comments so far that the lying employee should face some discipline.
The employer’s initial action in asking others to cover up is only normal and natural and is not really an injury per se to the other workers – they were only helping the company to move forward like any invested worker should; besides as you already pointed out, any of them could well be at the receiving end in the future.
I dont agree with the advice of the columnist however, the employer is a victim as well and neednt give the people time off.
They should rather make sure the colleagues know about the discipline and probably arrange lunch or something – a forum to seek the views and comments of the people involved; this will enable them let out any steam and give the employer opportunity to receive meaningful input into plugging any HR loopholes in future policy.