Unauthorised absence (AWOL)

Essex County Council is committed to supporting the health and wellbeing of all employees. As part of this commitment the council has a duty of care to any worker who is unexpectedly absent from work. It is important for colleagues and for you as their line manager to follow up any situations where an employee is unexpectedly absent and make enquiries to ensure their wellbeing and safety.

Contacting the absent employee

If there are no immediate safety concerns

If the employee’s unauthorised absence is likely to be because the employee has failed to submit an up-to-date fit note (sickness certificate) or for some other reason that doesn’t cause you to be immediately worried about the employee’s safety, you should attempt to make contact with the employee, as detailed in the sickness absence policy.

If there are safety concerns

If an employee doesn’t come into work, hasn’t followed the absence reporting process and you have concerns about their welfare, you may try to find out what’s happening by using the following steps:

1. Try contacting the employee using their work contact details and leave a message if there’s no answer
2. If the employee doesn’t respond within a couple of hours, you should try to call them using their personal contact details and leave a message or text if there’s no answer.
3. Make further reasonable attempts throughout the day to contact the employee by telephone, email, text, or other confidential means that may reach the employee.
4. If the employee still doesn’t respond, and you have serious concerns about their welfare, you may call the employee’s emergency contact to ensure that they are aware, in case the employee needs assistance. Where appropriate, they should pass on a message to ask the employee to get in touch.

If the employee fails to attend work for a second consecutive day and there has still been no contact or information received to explain the employee’s absence, you should inform People Support via the Assyst portal and continue to use the above steps to make contact with the employee.

If it is known that the employee lives alone, and attempts to contact the next of kin have failed, and there are serious concerns about the employee’s safety, you should consider whether it would be appropriate to inform the police to request a welfare check.

You should record the date, time and method of each attempt to contact the employee.

If the employee is a sponsored migrant worker and they have been absent from work for more than 10 consecutive working days without permission, you must report this unauthorised absence to the Home Office within 10 working days of the 10th day of their absence.

When the employee makes contact

If you speak to the employee, ask them why they haven’t been able to attend work or follow the absence reporting or certification procedure. If the employee has a good reason for this (for example because they’ve been involved in an accident or there’s been a family emergency), you should discuss and agree with them when they’ll be back at work. You may agree a period of approved leave or holiday to give them time to deal with things.

If the employee claims to have been sick (and unable to call in), you may ask for reasonable evidence of this. If you are not satisfied by the employee’s explanation for failing to follow the sickness absence reporting process, you may decide to continue to treat the absence as unauthorised.

When the employee returns to work

When the employee returns to work, you should arrange to meet with them on their first day back for a return-to-work interview. You should investigate the reason for the employee’s absence, discuss any appropriate support the employee may still need and ensure that their absence has been correctly recorded on My Oracle.

If the employee does not return to work

If the employee has not returned to work, or failed to make contact by the end of the second day of absence, you should contact People Support via the Assyst portal to discuss the individual circumstances of the case.

If appropriate, you should write to the employee to advise them that their absence is being considered as unauthorised absence and to invite them to an investigation meeting, in accordance with the council's disciplinary policy, to explain the reasons for their absence.  The letter should include any known facts about the absence, along with the details of the attempts you've made to contact them.

Disciplinary investigation

If the employee hasn’t return to work or fails to attend the investigation meeting, the investigation will proceed in their absence and the investigating manager will produce a summary report based on the steps taken and the information available at that time.  The employee will be advised of the next steps in writing.

If the employee still hasn’t returned to work or fails to attend an independent hearing arranged as part of the disciplinary process, without good reason, the meeting will go ahead without them, and the employee will be informed of the outcome in writing.

In exceptional circumstances (for example if you believe there could be an underlying health issue behind the employee’s absence), you may decide to rearrange the meeting.

If the employee returns to work or provides a fit note at any point after an invite to a meeting has been sent, the meeting will still go ahead to explore the reasons for their unauthorised absence. You should give the employee every opportunity to explain the reasons for their unauthorised absence before deciding on the outcome.

Withholding pay for unauthorised absence

Employees may not be paid for any period of unauthorised absence in any of the following circumstances:

• the employee has failed to follow absence notification and reporting procedures
• they have failed to make contact with you
• they have failed to return to work
• the reason given (if any) for the unauthorised absence is not considered reasonable by you as the line manager

You should discuss any decision to withhold pay with People Support via the Assyst portal in the first instance to consider the facts of the case and any information available.

Where the decision is made to withhold pay, the employee will be notified in writing advising them of the changes being made to their pay.