Today we’re talking about job abandonment -- something we’ve each seen a handful of times in our corporate careers. (Kat saw it more with people working in retail.)
We want you to know what job abandonment is, how to avoid it, and what the ripple effect can be when someone abandons their job.
What is job abandonment? Job abandonment is when you just disappear from work and nobody knows where you are for a certain period of time, even just a few days. It often leads to you losing your job.
When someone doesn’t show up without any notice, management and HR starts asking around. Then they call, email, text, Slack, and try to get in touch with someone any way they can. HR gets involved when they resort to using personal and emergency contact info to get in touch.
It’s a tough balance in trying to find the person and see that they are ok -- but you don’t want to set off too many alarm bells, just in case the whole thing was caused by a dead phone battery and an alarm not going off.
At a point when the job abandonment is suspected, the authorities may be called to do a wellness check, hospitals may be called to see if someone’s there, and if someone knows the person’s kid’s school, the school may be called to see if the family is ok. Before letting someone go for job abandonment, management and HR will try to find them and make sure they are ok.
Kat knew someone who just couldn’t deal with life and disconnected with their work. After trying to find them, the president of the company showed up at their house.
Job abandonments are very stressful for managers and HR people, even when the person turns up OK.The worry that happens when someone disappears is very real, and companies want to avoid invoking their job abandonment policy.
As the person who is managing your career, you do not want to be source of that stress and you want to be seen as responsible and reliable. If your company or manager doesn’t know that they can rely on you, your career in that role will be short-lived. And when you go to find your next job, it may be difficult to explain what happened if you simply burned your bridges and left.
To avoid this, we have some tips to avoid noncommunication and miscomunication with your workplace when you really just can't come in.
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