Managing employee situations in schools – do you know what to do?

The Octavo Partnership HR team has helped hundreds of schools know how to respond to employee situations. Challenging employee situations can arise at any time.
In preparation, you might like to consider what you would do with the employee situations detailed below. These are all situations which Octavo HR has helped the senior leaders in these schools resolve successfully

A term time only receptionist asked for leave during term time, had it refused and then went off sick with a bad back, but was silly enough to post photos of herself on Facebook smiling and having a great time in the casinos of Las Vegas. She claimed to have “photo shopped” the pictures and had never left the UK. She refused to provide her Passport as proof that she had not gone to the US.

What would you do?

A member of staff goes off sick just before Christmas. The school calls her to see if she is alright and there is a foreign dialling tone. When she returns in the new year the school ask her to explain this and she says that she had flu but got news that a cousin had died and she flew overseas whilst sick to attend the funeral. After the conversation with school management she goes off sick with stress. The school subsequently discovers that she went overseas to do charity work and even appeared as a guest on a local television programme promoting her charity organisation during this period of long-term sickness leave.

What would you do?

A member of staff working in a special school is accused by a pupil of assaulting him during a physical intervention. The pupil goes home and tells his mum who complains to the school. Other members of staff who witnessed the incident raise concerns to management. The individual is in their probation period.
What would you do?
A member of staff leaves the school premises one day when they were supposed to be supervising a class of vulnerable pupils without informing management and fails to sign out when they leave the premises. It is later discovered that they caught a train to attend a premier football match in another city.

What would you do?

Our management training sessions are designed to help ensure managers in schools are well prepared for such scenarios:
If you would like to know how you resolve these scenarios, have a look at our next training session.

For details about our Employee Relations help line and expert HR consultancy or our independent investigations service, please contact:

hrservices@croydon.peachpreview.co.uk or call us on 020 8241 5483