What Happens If An Employee Is Accused Of A Crime?

Every business owner needs to deal with various problems with their employees. There might be a dispute about pay or maybe an unmotivated employee that is underperforming. Those are all normal issues that any boss can expect to encounter at some point. But in some cases, you might have to deal with an employee that has been accused of a crime and that’s very difficult. You don’t know whether they are guilty of the crime or not so you can’t go making any split second decisions. It’s important that you take a measured approach and think about the next steps because it’s a very difficult situation. Here’s what you should do if an employee has been accused of a crime.

Keep It Quiet

It’s important that you keep things under wraps for now. If word gets out that an employee has been accused of a crime, it can cause some serious problems. It can quickly lead to employee infighting because people’s opinion of that person will change and they may start making judgments before they know the full story. The employee in question may become frustrated with people treating them like a criminal when they don’t know if they are actually guilty or not.

Investigate For Yourself

Before you decide how to move forward, you need to investigate for yourself and see whether you believe that your employee is guilty or not. It can take a while for the police to investigate crimes so you should try to find out what you can from the employee. Bring them into your office and ask them for their side of the story. If you genuinely believe that they are innocent, you may even want to consider helping them find a criminal defense lawyer to fight their corner for them. However, if you are unsure and you think that they may have committed the crime that they’re accused of, things get a little more tricky.

Suspension

At this point, it may be wise to suspend the employee. Even if you try to keep it under wraps, there is a chance that people will find out about it and it can cause some tensions around the office. If they are guilty of something and you have allowed them to continue working for you in the months leading up to the trial, that reflects very badly on your company as well. You don’t want to be known as a company that employs criminals so you should always suspend that person just to be safe.

Await A Verdict

Now all you can do is await the verdict and see what happens. If they are found not guilty, you can bring them back into the company and let them carry on as normal. If this is the case, it’s important that you speak with the rest of your staff beforehand to let them know that they shouldn’t be gossiping about it and the company needs to move on from the situation. If they are found guilty, you have no option but to fire them immediately.

Dealing with an employee that has been accused of a crime is tough. The most important thing to remember is that you should proceed carefully and get all of the facts before you make any decisions.

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