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Employee Gambling addiction

sfhrsfhr 14 Posts
in HR & Employment Law Vote Up0Vote Down
I work for a financial institution and we audit our employee's accounts for suspicious activity as a part of our normal operation procedures. Our lead accountant has been developing an increasingly excessive gambling habit over the past 2 years. Due to the high level of authority and responsibility she has in our organization, we recently referred her to our EAP for an analysis. They consider her addiction to be severe especially considering the position she holds within our organization and have recommended an outpatient treatment program. She is refusing and want to replace their program with a local Gambler's Anonymous program. At this point, her gambling problem has not affected her job and we have not discovered any discrepancies so have no work-related issues to take action on. However, the continued need to audit her and verify her work has caused a high lack of confidence in her abilities by her supervisor.

I need some advice as to whether we have any options with her going forward if we continue to see gambling issues since there have been no work related issues. Please note that we are an at-will state but we do not usually hang our hat on that fact in these types of matters so I would love to hear what some of you would suggest in this situation. Thanks!
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  • 8 Comments sorted by Votes Date Added
  • FunHRBankerFunHRBanker 562 Posts
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    We too are a financial insitution who audits employee accounts. Being that her outside acitivities have not affected her work performance, I'm not sure you can force anything when she says their's not a problem. I do appreciate and understand your concern, but this is not your business...until she's affecting your business.

    We have an employee who we believe has some gambling and money management issues also. She has been talked to, but nothing seems to change.
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  • sfhrsfhr 14 Posts
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    Thanks for the reply - it seems wrong that we have to sit back and wait to find out money's missing, etc. before we can do anything. Thanks again.
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  • FunHRBankerFunHRBanker 562 Posts
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    I was thinking the exact same thing, but it's not business related. Unless she's hitting your overdraft list and checks are being returned, I don't think there's much you can do beyond suggesting the EAP, and even that may have crossed the line.
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  • sfhrsfhr 14 Posts
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    Actually there have been two return items that had been deposited to her account from a third party but she was able to cover them right away. Oh well, I guess I'm looking at a waiting game. Thanks again!
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  • ritaanzritaanz 2,665 Posts
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    What would you do if this employee was addicted to alcohol? sex? instead of gambling. When you say employee's account, is this thier personal account or customer accounts that they are responsible for?

    Unless this problem surfaces at your place of business, there is little that you can do.
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  • sfhrsfhr 14 Posts
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    The return items were deposited to her personal account (which is an account of our financial institution). As an accountant, her level of authority at our comapny is quite high in that she has access to all customer and employee accounts and authority levels/access that is higher than most employees and this higher access posses more risk to our organization in normal circumstances. In regards to the employee who would be addicted to alcohol or sex, we would refer to EAP if we felt the situation warranted it which is what we have done with her. At this point, her problem hasn't affected work performance so I understand that there isn't much else we can do. Thanks for the reply.
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  • GJohnsonGJohnson 38 Posts
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    As she has a high level of authority and access levels to customer and employee accounts, make sure that you have adequate audit controls in place. Our company had a trusted, long term employee who embezzeled substantial funds to fund a gambling habit. At the time we were understaffed and did not have adequate separation of duties. We discovered the embezzelment after she abruptly quit. It took months to unravel the methods she used to take the funds, prove the case, and ultimately to prosecute. The damage extended well beyond the loss of funds.
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  • sfhrsfhr 14 Posts
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    We definitely have been making more of an effort to do so. I'm sure this is where our frustration is coming from...all of this extra time involved to audit her work does start making us feel that it's becoming work-related. Thanks for the input!
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