Dear All,

We recently recruited an Operation Manager of a Call Center and within a month we suspended his service since we received lot of complaints against him for his behavior, there were 4 instances based on that we have decided to suspend him. And we have given him 1 month notice to have a further enquiry and if found guilty we will terminate his service.

1) Complaint received from the female staff working under him during the meeting or on a work station "he stair us on and we feel very awkward to stand in front of him".

2) Received a call from his Landlord and said "An underage girl was found crying in his Flat, because she was sexually exploited in the Flat, he has taken on lease just 2 days back. Since there were no contact details He contacted on company number as he had a copy of the appointment letter given by us to complaint about this to us. (their
was no police complaint lodge against him)

3) References Check Failed on all occasions: Again tried last week but unable to connect any previous companies to check employee verification even on working days and working hours.

4) Applied for Loans and credit cards: In the Duration of 30 days within joining the organization he has applied in almost all banks for credit cards, personal loans, and car loan. After he left we received many calls and reference checks from ICICI Bank, HDFC bank, Standard Chartered bank, Citibank. For verification of employment as he has submitted our appointment letter and office address as correspondence address, since he had only his driving license.

I want to confirm any of the above point can be legally consider for his termination, also please help me to understand the process from suspension till termination and also send some documents if you have some.

Please send your suggestions ASAP.

Mayur

Dear Mayur,

Out of 4 instances you narrated here, two are pertaining to your orgnisation i.e. point 1 & 3. Remaining two does not come under organisation purview. Coming to point 1 - First of all respective harassed women employee should lodge a complaint against the person in writing. Once HR receives the complaint, will investigate and proved guilty on the incident, and then termination is possible provided if your organization implemented "Sexual Harassment Policy", Point – 3: if your appointment letter stated that reference checks were not seemed to be valid, leading to termination of services, you can always terminate the employee services along with documentation proof.

The very first incidence itself should have made the HRD take action in terms of verifying and validating the incidence per the Sexual Harassment Policy of the Organization.

The further incidences remark the personality he has, you can use the item number 1 & 3 for terminating his employment and there wouldn’t be any legal complications.

Also, it’s very important for you to scrutinize the appointment order issued by the Organization for the Termination Clause. The best way to proceed is to put him on suspension for some time and then issue him the termination orders as per Company Policy.

I cannot comment much on item no. 2 since we cannot validate the incidence as there has been no Police Complaint filed against him. From the banks point, loans are personal issues and the bank should be verifying his credentials before issuing him the amount.

Thanks and Regards,

Guy

Staring at a female employee, technically, may or may not prove anything, be it in writing or a verbal complaint. Even though the person's intention may not be good, it would be difficult to take any action against him on his assumed wrong intention. However, he could be warned on this by his superiors.

I think the actionable reason could be his 'Ref-check failure' provided it was mentioned as a pre-requisite to his appointment / confirmation of appointment. At the outset he should be asked to facilitate the completion of ref. check process. If he is not the right kind of person, something may emerge out of Ref. check exercise.

The above are general views only and may not be considered as recommendation to act
in a particular manner in this matter. You may like to consult a lawyer to get the legal opinion on this.