Employee problems

[John85]

Hi,

I am looking for a bit of advice about what to do about a situation that has cropped up.

For the past 3 months an employee of mine has been working on a project which has taken 201 hours.

However when I have received all the code, it is nothing near what 201 hours should of taken.

The employee has now left the company, which was planned for the past 3 months as he was going to uni. He worked from home.

I have not paid him his final wage yet.

What are my options? I am really annoyed that hes claimed for so many hours for such little work.

Thanks

 

[The Business Valuer]

I am not sure about your lawful position in these circumstances, so I will not comment on that.

However I am sure that the following responsibilities are yours:

- Regularly review work carried out by employees and assess progress.
- Ensure all employed staff are of an expected quality before employing them.

Clearly letting 3 months pass before having a progress meeting is far too long.
And it is your responsibility to employ somebody fit for purpose and this guy clearly wasn't up to your expected standards.

Regards

Simon

 

[obscure]

I don't want to appear harsh but didn't you have any milestone progress assessment processes in place? The employee should have been submitting code for archive/backup as the project went along and there should have been regular reviews as things went along.

If you can show that the code doesn't do what was intended you might be able to take action. However it can actually be quite hard to retroactively claim that something isn't adequate when you have been paying for it. Payment is often take by court as a sign of approval.

 

[FreelanceSoftwareDeveloper]

Looking at this from another angle you must've been fairly happy that the project was running to a reasonable time/budget. The number of lines of code is not necessarily representative of the amount of work put in.

 

[ShortCouture]

If he was an employee - not a temp or contractor - then you have to pay him for the days that he worked, regardless of what he did. It's not clear on what contractual basis you hired him and how long he was with you etc. These things make a difference to your position.

When you gave him the work presumably you gave him a document of requirements? or a specificaiton to work to? If he hasn't delivered to the required spec then you have an argument that he hasn't done the work so could perhaps pay him for what he has done. But as the other two posters have said - if you didn't have reviews to see how he was getting on, and to make sure he was onthe right track - then he can't really be blamed for not doing what you wanted.

He may have been wasting time at home - but ultimatley it's your responsibility to check what your employees are working on, and how etc etc.

 

[John85]

Thanks for the replies. To clarify, he was an actual employee, not a contractor.

I did give him a spec and have pretty much left him to get on with it. We did review every week progress to which he told me many things he had done.

However, upon reviewing all the actual code when the project was transfers to our office I discovered it was nothing like that he was meant to be doing.

I was too trusting, I admit that and also have been very busy to keep on constant top of the project like I normally would of done.