A face they remembered from a prior employer....

mbeam

[font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON 06-30-08 AT 09:59PM (CST)[/font][br][br]A team member stopped in the other day to say she and a friend (who also works here) debated on whether they should say something and decided that they should. Both of them are hardworking and in good standing.

One of our newer team members who was hired late last year looked familiar to them. They believe she is someone they both worked with at a previous employer 9 years ago; one as her supervisor. Allegedly, during her employment, it was found that she had redirected company product to her home address in a couple different ways. She wasn't employed there long after this was discovered. The former supervisor was taken out of the loop and HR took over so she wasn't sure exactly how things were addressed. Our new employee then moved out of state. .

I checked her resume and application. No mention is made of employment at the place indicated. She had graduated from a local school but the work experience was all from another state (the same one the former supervisor mentioned she moved to).

Reference & background checks all came back good based on the information we had and were for several years at a time (eligible for rehire as well).

It would appear that this alleged incident took place over 9 years ago. The person who brought this up also indicated that this individual may have changed and had been torn on saying something to us about her past experience in case it was a situation of mistaken identity.

Would you address with her or leave it go? We haven't mentioned anything to her supervisors and there have been no performance issues that we've been made aware of.

ray a

Do you have a 90 day Introductory Period? If I discovered something potentially serious about a new ee, I would consider just letting them go for "fit" reasons if they are less than 90 day ee's. You could approach this person and say you heard she may have worked for XYZ company a few years ago and see what her reaction is. But, then on the other hand, I do hire people that may have commited a serious crime if it happened several years ago and they paid their dues. It is possible she screwed up and learned her lesson and she could be a good ee for you.

Rockie

I'd be concerned for a few reasons:

1. Is this person in a position of trust with your company? Usually, people who have "redirected company product" and I assume this means stealing are always cause for concern if they are put in a position to get their hands on another company's assets.

2. Also, this person continues to be dishonest if they did not divulge this on their application.

If you have something on your application that states to the effect that falsification on the job application may be grounds for immediate termination, I'd go ahead and terminate on this.

Before anything though, bring the person in and ask if they did actually work for XYZ organization and if they say they did, ask why they choose not to divulge this on the application. I always feel the person has the right to explain their side of the story.

lrobb

I think I would try a little different approach. Call the company she allegedly worked at and find out if she was ever employed there. If she never worked there I would move on and forget about it. If she did work there I would call her in and ask her about it. If she is untruthful then take the appropriate action. If she is truthful then you have a decision to make.

mbeam

Thanks for the input. We're going to monitor the situation. We have controls in place (although am sure someone clever could figure a way around it) that track our samples and orders and work in another department so it's a "self-audit" of sorts.

We were torn over the time lapse (figure everyone deserves a second chance), good references from most recent employers and "what if" we're wrong on the person's identity.