One Friday evening and manager had one of her employees approach her advising that she (the employee) had stolen money from petty Cash!!
Using the HRtoolkit tools the employer started a disciplinary investigation.
Well, the employees defence was that she was a gambling addict and that the company owed her a duty of care to provide a safe working environment!!!
Unfortunately this argument then got legs. It turned out her previous manager (in the same company) had known about the gambling issue, had wanted rid of the problem so didn’t mention it when he gave her a reference. But he did know the new job would have petty cash responsibilities!
Ultimately, after using the Disciplinary Due Consideration assessment, she was dismissed because the company owed a duty of care to all employees, and they could not protect other staff’s handbags from her!
It could all have been avoided had the original manager been up front about the issues and/or had dealt with them, and the hiring manager had probed more deeply into the reference being given. Or credit checks had been done!
The time and costs to investigate were several $1,000’s… and the potential reputational damage was $10,000 of thousands
Avoid these costly mistakes, do good reference checks, and don’t try to cover up issues… click here to do it right!