LDRDocs/Foundations and Governance/Corrective Actions/Suspensions.md

Sometimes an employee can be suspended from work, and this article talks about that. When an employee is suspended they aren't allowed to come to work without an appointment to see a manager.

There are two types of suspensions that are used for different reasons, and they are handled a little differently. 

## General things about suspensions
When an employee is suspended, the following things are generally expected:

1. The employee is not allowed on company property unless they have an appointment with a manager.
2. The employee isn't allowed to do any work for the company, even if it's done remotely.
3. The employee is expected to return all company property or documents in their possession until the suspension is over.
4. Suspensions may be paid or unpaid, depending on the circumstances.
5. The employee is not to have any contact with customers.

## Administrative suspension / leave
An Administrative Suspension might be issued when the business benefits from having the employee out of the workplace but the employee hasn't necessarily done anything wrong. In some cases, it could be thought of as a manditory paid vacation. The other major reason for administrative leave is where an employee is accused of something serious, but no other actions are warranted until the matter has been investigated.

## Disciplinary Suspension
A Disciplinary Suspension should be used when an employee has done something that is serious enough they could be terminated, but it's more desirable to retain their services.

Return to work can be both time and contingency based. That means the employee is suspended until they perform some kind of action by a deadline. If the employee fails to perform the action it's assumed they have quit.

The goal of a suspension should be one of two different things:

1. Temporarily remove a hazard or disruption from the workplace so the matter can behandled later (like sending an employee home for the day because they're being extremely disruptive)
2. Temporarily remove an employee from the workplace until some problem they caused is corrected.

The key aspect is that the employee's presence at work is contributing to the problem, but we would rather not terminate them because we suspect the issue is correctable.

### Being sent home for the day
Being sent home for the day falls under the category of a disciplinary suspension but isn't necessarily as serious. A person can be sent home for the rest of the day if they're doing something that is highly disruptive to the work environment and in a supervisor's best judgment the situation can't be resolved in a short period of time (generally about 5-15 minutes). The employee should be given [[Counselling]] about their actions or behaviors after they return to work.

Here are some examples of when this may be appropriate:

- An employee comes to work in a bad mood, and they are generally grouchy and yelling at everybody. They're not getting their work done, and they're causing other people to be unproductive.
- An employee comes to work too sick to do their job, or creating a risk of making other people sick. We asked the employee to just take the day off, but they refuse to leave.
- An employee is given a verbal warning about a relatively minor issue at work, like having their music too loud. Instead of professionally responding to the warning, they try to have a big argument about it, causing several people to stop working.
- There is strong suspicion an employee is too heavily intoxicated or mentally impaired to do their work.

This type of suspension is the same thing as a Chaplain's [[Circles#Power of Dismissal|Power of Dismissal]].

### Return to work contingencies
It should be made clear return to work contingencies connected to a disciplanary suspension are meant to be done on the employee's own time. The company generally doesn't compensate for them, but may under certain circumstances determined on a case-by-case basis where individual exceptions can be made.

#### Self-Driven Action Plan
The most basic return to work contingency is a Self-Driven Action Plan, which is a written document that includes 3 sections:

1. An explanation of what the employee did wrong and why it's a problem.
2. What they're going to do to fix the damage already caused, or explanation of why they aren't able to fix it.
3. What they're going to do moving forward so it doesn't happen anymore.

#### Class or test
In some cases an employee can be asked to complete some kind of class or test before they're allowed to return to work.

Here are some examples:

1. An employee suspended for misconduct might be asked to take a class on conflict resolution, anger management, or something similarly related to their actions.
2. An employee suspended because of intoxication or substance abuse might be asked to pass a drug test before returning to work.
3. A sick employee might be required to show proof they're not sick anymore or that they sought treatment.