settlement

yesterday saro and I had to deal with an employee who resigned and then didn't want to pay the money needed. 

such an interesting conversation 

did share with the girl that she needs to be flexible and go with conversations.

they tried to turn it around and say if we terminate then they don't need to pay. 

we tried to emphasise that in any situation conversation should be the first step in resolving conflict or misunderstanding 

if we had wanted to terminate we would not have done it summararily like this. we would have invited her for a conversation 

we did in fact invite her to have a chat and instead they sent a letter of resignation which they say now was not a letter of resignation haha. but an intention 

then we had to explain what an intention of.resignation letter would look like .. not I wish to resign. look forward to working with you etc! 

language and semantics are important 

she offered a compromise that she would work for free for a month . I nearly fell for that. but I asked.. and talked about trust. trust is a delicate thing and it's been broken now. we laid out how it had been broken. deadlines not kept. messages not answered. resignation letter for invitation to talk. so on what basis can we trust you. 

that got them silent a bit. before we could exore further the husband mentioned going to court and we stopped him. that was our perogative! and we need not even have let him in to this talk. we are understanding and trying to meet them and be reasonable. 

I said he was not helping to build the case of trust with his talk of the law! he is fast jumping ahead constantly.  we ask to talk they resign. now while talking he is talking about law. there are so many steps in between 

we could agree on a few things. 

not a win win thing to work together.  not a right fit. 

we all care about protecting babies and children no qn about that (she just found out she is pregnant). 

we want to move on amiably. 

we explained where we got the figure and that as a business we had to recoup our losses. forget opportunity cost -we could have hired someone else and she left etc. just material costs of 2000 for her salary and 100 for her training 

she said she had been paid 1200. saro confirmed it was 1400 plus cpf 300. so total 2700. 

finally they came down and said what if they paid 1700. for the salary. 

they saw it was reasonable. 

earlier we also talked about the need to be flexible . work life balance is important but some flexibility and open conversations also important.