Mark Neuberger Discusses When Employees Should Disclose Cause of Absence

Foley & Lardner LLP of counsel Mark Neuberger is quoted in the SHRM article, “Need to Know: When Workers Should Tell Employers Why They Are Absent,” offering insight on situations where employees should disclose the cause behind their absence from the workplace.

“You can’t just go AWOL,” Neuberger said. He explained that for most private employers, if an employee does not show up to work for three days without communicating, that is considered quitting without notice.

Neuberger, commenting on U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s failure to disclose a recent hospitalization, said if the same thing had happened in the private sector, “most employers would be on good grounds for termination.”

Neuberger said that if a senior-level employee such as a chief executive officer or chief operating officer is hospitalized, nondisclosure is “a whole different issue.”  Maintaining secrecy when a high-ranking executive is ill “is a breach of trust,” he added. “There’s a fiduciary duty of a company to disclose it.”