This is one of the most shocking pieces of news I’ve heard in the recent past.
An employee of a Swiss insurance agency called in sick, and was later fired since she logged in to Facebook on her iPhone while at home. Something smells fishy here. Maybe the company was looking for an excuse to fire the employee. It’s also interesting that a co-worker alerted the company of the Facebook activity. So, it appears that it is perfectly acceptable for an employee to log on to Facebook from work, but not from home when sick? Ludicrous.
I wonder what the company’s stance is on watching TV? Do they expect the employee to just lay in bed doing nothing? More often than not, a person feels more sick when doing nothing. When you’re sick, you need people around and since it was during business hours, you would want to connect to them online.
Overall, this is a HR disaster for the company and there is so much more than meets the eye. The excuse given for firing the employee and the fact that the employee is not suing the company means something isn’t right. Maybe she threatened to blow the whistle on potential corrupt practices. After all, insurance companies are under stricter regulations here in the United States, and I assume that is the case in Switzerland too.
Facebooking while out sick gets employee fired | Digital Media – CNET News.