Letter to employee’s emergency contact

Where an employee is absent from work without permission and you’ve been unsuccessful in contacting them personally, one of the steps you should take is to contact their next of kin or listed emergency contact. Use our letter for this purpose. 

Tackling unauthorised absence

Our Unauthorised Absence Policy sets out the procedure that you will follow when faced with an employee who is absent from work without permission. This includes contacting the employee’s listed emergency contact or next of kin where you have been unsuccessful in making contact with the employee personally. The starting point is to do this by telephone but, if that approach fails, then, when you write to the employee setting out that they’re absent from work without permission, you can write to the named emergency contact at the same time. Our Letter to Employee’s Emergency Contact is very simple. It states that you’re currently trying to contact your employee and therefore it requests the recipient to pass the letter on to the employee and ask that they make contact with you as a matter of urgency. Finally, it asks that if the recipient can’t do this, or if they’re no longer the emergency contact, can they let you know accordingly. It’s important when sending this letter that you don’t divulge to the recipient any personal information relating to your employee, for example by mentioning that there’s a potential disciplinary issue relating to their unauthorised absence. The sole purpose of the letter is to demonstrate to an employment tribunal that you have done all you can to contact your employee; it does not give you grounds to discuss them or their employment with any third party as that would be a breach of data protection rules.