How to Layoff for a Single Position

We have a person that was hired as a secretary to our President last August. For the past 4 months she has been working at the Presidents home during a major refirbishing project and been paid by the President out of his pocket - she has not been drawing a salary from the company. The project is almost done. We are eliminating her company position as his secretary as the position will no longer be needed. QUESTION: Since she has been employed, but not working at or being paid by the company, I am concerned as to what is appropriate in layoff procedures.

Comments

  • 6 Comments sorted by Votes Date Added
  • When this person was hired, was she told that the position was a temporary one?
  • [font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON 02-15-04 AT 09:50PM (CST)[/font][br][br]I'm a bit more concerned about the appropriatness of her hanging out at the president's house for four months and him paying her under the table out of his pocket. Laid 'OFF' might not be the appropriate term here. I doubt she's given much thought at all to her 'real' job back at the company.
  • You can eliminate a position whenever you like. Doesn't seem like there is much question as to the necessity of the position since nobody has been attending to it for the past four months. Seems like she has already been laid off since she's not drawing a paycheck from your company.

    Doesn't seem like this is the real issue here.

    What type of work is she doing at the presidents house? is this job code 99 (i.e. anything and everything else that's asked???) Seems like you may be more worried about some sort of personal relationship that may go awry when she gets cut free.

    If your president is this careless in "creating positions", then I'd leave him alone to deal with it. He must have had some communication with her as to why she didn't need to do any real work at the office, so let him clean up his own mess.

    This secretary sounds like a real hands on project manager.
  • The information you have provided is almost mutually exclusive. You talk about the company eliminating the position, but the company has not been paying her, the President has. Is she is employee or yours? I don't think she can be both. If you hired her, then just eliminate the temporary position and be done with it. If he hired her as a personal assistant, it's his issue.

    Next you will be telling us that he wants to be reimbursed for these out of pocket expenses and open up a whole new can of worms.


  • What a nest of nightmares this could end up being!The individual is on your payroll, but being paid out of pocket? Is the president paying her benefits, ss, taxes, etc.? I can see her being laid off, then coming back and claiming that she was made to work "off the clock" at the president's house, doing God knows what,(does sexual harassment ring a bell here?), overtime claims, etc. Probably no employee benefits paid at all. Keep in mind if she was "on your company payroll" she is entitled to all the benefits of a regular employee regardless of the physical location she was working at.

    What was he thinking?
  • What was her expectation? In her mind, was she working for the President of the company as his assistant (falling under and other duties as assigned) or was she working for him as an individual with no association to the company.

    What happened with her insurance, taxes, etc. as another forum member noted.

    Any written documentation as to her job performance while she was officially working for the company?
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