What would you do?

[kwashburn]

• What assumptions are present in this scenario?
The assumptions seem to be mostly on part of the employee but there are certainly some assumptions on part of the employer as well. Some of the assumptions made by the employee are that he has not broken any rules. The employee seems to assume that because he had some emergency situations come up that it was ok to make use of the car for personal reasons. Also the employee seems to assume that because he is a single parent and has a sick child it was ok to miss the mandatory Monday morning meetings. The employee also makes the assumption that if he gets the job done he doesn’t consider himself to be late.

On the employers end her assumptions are more apparent in the first portion of the video when she is reviewing what the job entails and the expectations. As any employer who is hiring someone we make assumptions on whether we think someone can or can’t do the job. Her assumption is that he could do the job and meet the expectations of the job. In the second part of the video there wasn’t too much that stood out in terms of assumptions being made by the employer. I guess some of the assumptions made at that point were he is not doing the job as expected and she is making assumptions on whether he is actually right for the job at this point.
• How would you respond?
I would have likely started out the conversation by inquiring about these things and asking him about them, and the reasons behind them. However I think she did a good job at presenting the issues and was very clear on what the concerns and issues were. It’s also not clear if there were other conversations with him to address these things. If there were then the conversation had with him seemed appropriate, and I would have likely taken a similar approach.

• What would you do?
As mentioned above I would have asked some questions if it was the first time addressing some of these issues. In this scenario if it were me there would have been some other conversations before this one. It’s not clear whether this was done or not. I also wonder if it was an isolated incident or whether it’s a pattern. Based on the employee’s actions it’s clear that he did not exercise good judgment in any of these scenarios. It also sounds like he may not have been forthcoming with his employer ahead of time. If these were the facts which they seem to be my decision would be to not continue the employment relationship with him.

• What questions did you ask yourself in coming to your conclusion?
Some of the other questions that I had were how long was this going on for and was he ever provided with feedback on any of this beforehand? As I mentioned above I wonder if this was an isolated incident or a pattern of behavior. To ultimately come to my decision I asked myself what type of person would be important to have in this position. And because this is someone responsible for driving a company car and for the most part working independently it requires an employee who has good judgment and someone who is also going to be a good communicator. It’s clear this employee is not a good communicator and did not demonstrate good judgement in a few different scenarios.