Need advice: My maintenance man has been leaving work at three and coming back to clock out at four.

Hey guys I’m gonna need of some advice. I Work a small housing authority I am the only one in the office and I employ one full-time maintenance man. My current maintenance man has been on position for five months now his hours are 8 to 4 my hours are 8 to 3. I found him I found out that he has been leaving work at three and coming back to clock out At four. What would you do?

Either a final warning or termination. That is theft of time. He is being paid 5 hours a week that he didn’t work.

That’s my thought too but he’s really actually good at what he does and it’s super hard to find qualified maintenance willing to work for crappy pay

But if he steals time from you, what else is he doing when you are not around? Maybe you need to change his hours to mirror yours.

Fire!

With no warning! HR will have a blast

Depends on the state…at will states it would’ve fine to fire for this with out warning and a small company may not even have an HR…with that being said I would be willing to give a warning but it would be very difficult to trust him moving forward.

Agree. That’s like stealing pay

I would get clearance from HR but that is theft -

Change his hours to 8-3.

Write ups, write ups so you can terminate

Well...that is embezzlement so you can decide if you want to give him a chance to fix his behavior or you can end his employment.

Issue a write up then adjust his hours!

Thank you all for the amazing advice!! I have calculated that in the last nine days of working he has stolen seven hours of labor I am going to write him up and tell him this is his final warning and then if anything else happens he will be terminated. thank you all so much. hopefully it all works out

Stealing requires no warning I feel.

If he is good at his job, give him a final warning and change his hours to your. However, that being said, if he is stealing hours he may be stealing elsewhere.

Work until 4:00 pm one day and catch him

I would sit down and have a transparent conversation with him. Acknowledge where you see his value, but be candid about the expectations that he is not meeting and that it's resulted in a break down of trust. The hard conversations are the worst, so I wish you nothing but the best. Always check in with HR and see if they have a suggested or required protcol. In whatever way that you address, make sure it's documented as a verbal or written warning/conversation. 

As hard as it will be have the talk about the hours. Make sure to document this discussion. Then set up maintenance things to do after 3pm, that take about a hour.
If you are his direct supervisor you must have the performance talks.

It is company theft and it is unethical. Not sure how long he has been doing this. Warning/write up is needed and a talk face to face. Change hours to 8-3 is a good idea. Does he go off the property while still on the clock?