01 Aug 2023
We were once approached by a manager who knew their employee had been looking for other work. There had been a real unsettling period in the factory, and many staff were jumping ship. This manager wanted to do all he could to stop a certain employee from leaving, but as expected, the employee rolled up to his office one day and handed his notice in.
In a desperate attempt to keep this employee, the manager wanted to put the new employer off and make it look like they had made a really poor recruitment decision.
When the reference request came in, the manager had to answer 3 specific questions:
1. Is the employee suitable to carry out the new job he has been offered?
(A copy of the job description was attached)
The manager wanted to pick out points in the new job description that he didn't think the employee could do, though he had no evidence to support this. A manager's opinion on whether an employee can carry out a new role effectively for a new employer shouldn't be relied upon heavily. Recruiting employers should be able to rely sufficiently on their own recruitment practices to help them make quality recruitment choices.
2. Has the employee been the subject of any disciplinary proceedings in the past 5 years?
In this case, he hadn't, but the manager wanted to say that he had previously considered disciplinary action, although it hadn't gone anywhere. Managers providing a reference should not go over and above what's being asked. The clear answer to question 2 was 'NO'. And that should be the answer provided.
Even if it were the case that the manager had a problem with the employee, it was apparent that the employee knew nothing about it, so to provide any information about this in a reference would have been asking for trouble. It sounds unlikely in any case that the employee had caused any problems, given how keen the manager was to keep them.
3. Please comment overall on the employee's sick absences from work in the past 12 months
And here, the manager wanted to say that the employee's child had been seriously ill, which had led to the employee taking a substantial amount of time off work. Now, employers should always remember that when completing reference requests, keep to the relevant facts! The question was about the employee's sick absence, and the answer that should be given should only relate to sick absence. To do anything other than that would be very unfair to the employee and wouldn’t be an honest answer to the question that they were asked.
A final point to note: If your employees are serious enough about wanting to leave, tackle the issues that are leading to their departure, do not demotivate them even further by putting barriers in their way. This helps nobody and can often result in the employee in question going off on long-term sick leave as they become depressed at not being able to leave a poor work situation.
