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Separating belief from suspicion in elder abuse investigations
Elder financial exploitation, or EFE, is on the rise, with vulnerable adults losing more than US$28 billion annually, according to a recent AARP study.
Author:
Canada | Publication | March 2, 2023
As a result of the pandemic, many employees moved to hybrid or completely remote working arrangements. Employers are now faced with the challenge of monitoring a workforce without direct supervision. Two recent cases show how an employer can leverage technology to monitor employee productivity and how to respond to suspected time theft. Time theft occurs when employees are paid for time they did not work and is a serious form of misconduct.
During the pandemic, an Ontario employer assigned two-person work crews to individual work vehicles to limit contact between employees.1 The employer expected each employee would drive independently to the assigned work site and complete the work together.
The employer received a complaint that an employee was not showing up to his scheduled assignments. It investigated and concluded the employee was paid for more than 200 hours when he did not attend his assigned work site. The employer terminated him for cause and successfully defended a grievance filed by the employee’s union. The arbitrator found just cause for dismissal based on reliable evidence of time theft collected by the employer:
In response to concerns about the productivity of an employee who worked from home, an employer in British Columbia scheduled weekly check-in meetings and installed time-tracking software on her laptop.2 The employer later noticed the employee submitted time for files she had not worked on. The employer used the time-tracking data to check for discrepancies between reported work time and work product. After discovering there were 50 hours on the employee’s timesheets that she did not spend on work-related tasks, the employer terminated the employee for just cause, and she initiated a wrongful dismissal action.
The employer successfully defended the wrongful dismissal action. The adjudicator found just cause for dismissal due to the evidence of time theft collected through computer monitoring software:
Time theft is a real risk of remote work. A combination of monitoring technologies and workplace management practices can reduce that risk. Best practices include:
Publication
Elder financial exploitation, or EFE, is on the rise, with vulnerable adults losing more than US$28 billion annually, according to a recent AARP study.
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