I am a fairly new employer, employing up to 3 employees. From the very start of my business I have been doing all I can to do things by the book - contracts drawn up by professionals and explained when employing; policies and procedures in place; basic terms of employment met; fair treatment and payment etc. etc.

So I am totally aware that employees have their rights and we have to honour them.

However, I am at my wits end with regards to the general disrespect and disregard by employees for these contractual terms and company policies, specifically when it comes to giving notice and resigning. I am all for moving on in your career but if an employee just walks out or informs you that they intend to leave within a week, despite breach of contract wrt notice period, it actually costs my business money not only in terms of the time I have to spend to find a replacement on such short notice, but also paying for a casual stand-in until I can find a longer term replacement. As it’s such a small business, this is extremely harmful to my business - every employee plays a key role.

As I understand it, there’s nothing I can do but I to prove AWOL, abscondment or dessertion and then a formal dismissal, with of course all the correct salary payouts etc. Then I may have a civil case, but only if the employee owes me money?

My actual question here is, what can we as employers do to protect ourselves since contracts and warnings about disciplinary action and dismissal are simply ignored? I have looked everywhere but it really seems as though employers only have responsibilities and no rights, while there are no repercussions for employees.

I would like to be able to recuperate costs in terms of company time spent and money spent to replace the employee on short notice, paying for professional advice and the business suffering due to and understaffed situation, from the employee that left. I would like to send him/her an invoice for this and send the inevitable unpaid invoice to a debt collector and work this into my company policy... What on earth else are we as small business owners and employers to do?!