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Illness, injury
“A colleague did not come to work in the morning. He did not apologize, which was very unusual for him. I asked others if he had called someone to say he was sick. No one knew anything about his condition. He acts as our technician and is always there to help other colleagues when they need help,” describes Radka, a HR specialist.
The colleague also heard nothing in the following days. “We called him, wrote messages, but to no avail. He lived alone and we had no contact with anyone from the extended family,” he continued. So an employee offered to go to the man’s home. He piteously opened it for her. She immediately called emergency services and the man was eventually taken to hospital.
At this point, the worker’s disappearance is explained. Tomáš Procházka, a labor law expert at Aegis Law, says that from the employer’s point of view, the search for a missing employee always starts the same, regardless of the reason. The initial procedure usually involves questioning other employees – colleagues who may have had personal contact with the missing person and know the reason for his absence.
“Suddenly, the company has no employee on duty and does not know why. The employer is not legally obliged to look for the employee, but he usually does so to pay for health insurance and find out how he is doing and whether he can still rely on the employee,” Procházka explains.
If possible and the employer has contact details, the employee in question can also be contacted, Procházka says. “They are not obliged to pass on any information to the employer, but in my experience they usually – but of course not always – share it,” the expert adds.
As a result, he recommends that companies ask employees to provide an emergency contact, someone who can be reached if something goes wrong.
If informal search methods fail, lawyers recommend contacting the Czech Social Security Administration and verifying whether the employee is on sick leave.
“The next steps usually depend on how much effort the employer is willing to expend on the search, or if they are satisfied that the employee has simply decided to stop coming to work and will move towards a hypothetical termination of the employment relationship. If he wants to search further, he can try to contact the police, saying that the employee is missing. If the police find an employee, they usually inform the employer,” Procházka explains.
In case of illness or injury, the employee is obliged to inform the company in advance that he/she cannot work or plans to see a doctor. “Of course, when health conditions suddenly deteriorate, this cannot be dealt with in advance. There may also be cases where the employee’s health condition makes it impossible to inform the employer, such as a coma. Even in this case, relatives are not obliged to inform the employer, but they often do so,” Procházka adds.
If an employee could have informed the company of their absence in advance but failed to do so, this would constitute a breach of duty on the part of the employee. This can usually be addressed with a letter of reprimand.
The employee decided not to come to work
This is a relatively common type of disappearance where employees simply decide not to show up for work.
But such a decision in itself is certainly not enough. “Of course, the employee is obliged to terminate his employment properly by giving notice and complying with the notice period. If he simply stops coming to work and is absent for at least a week, he may be punished with immediate termination of employment. This is actually what the employee wants to achieve, so that he can start working somewhere else, but the employer will at least be exempted from the obligation to pay health insurance premiums for the employee,” says Procházka.
In this case, the employer can also ask the employee to compensate for the losses caused. “This does not happen in practice because the losses caused are usually not high and difficult to prove in court,” the lawyer warned.
prison
It is also possible that the employee ends up in prison. Even in this case, he must inform the company of the start of his sentence. “The situation can be more complicated if the employee is detained by the police and ends up in custody. There, most of the time his first thought is not to inform about the upcoming absence from work,” Prochazka points out.
At the same time, absence from work due to detention or serving a sentence is not in itself grounds for termination of employment (it can be a criminal offence). Therefore, the employer must excuse the employee’s absence.
“If an employer wants to find out if an employee is serving a sentence, he can contact the prison department. It will also inform him which prison the employee is in and, for example, whether any documents need to be delivered to him,” the expert explains.
die
Of course, in the last worst-case scenario, the employee is unable to inform their supervisor of the situation. The survivor should do so, but if they choose not to, it is difficult to legally enforce against them.
Some of their motivation may be that in the event of death, the wages owed for days worked will be transferred directly to the relatives listed in the law, that is, the spouse, children and parents who live with the person’s family. The idea in this case is that the survivors can immediately use the employer’s money to pay for their living expenses without having to wait for the outcome of the inheritance process, which may take several months.
Michal Smutný of consulting and training firm TCC says the back pay can be up to three times the deceased employee’s average salary. In addition to money for days worked, money is also paid for unused vacation time or other promised performance (usually bonuses).
Communications between the survivor and the company must always be in writing. It includes requests for payment and a statement that they permanently live in the same household as the employee.
Katerina Khovolkova
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