We have for years advised clients to include a “Three-Day No Call/No Show” policy into their employee handbooks. The legal value of this policy is that the employee voluntarily resigns by job abandonment, instead of our clients having to terminate his/her employment.
This is legally valuable because if the employee later sues your company, s/he would probably have to prove that you took an “adverse employment” action – like terminating employment - against him/her. S/he may not be able to prove this under a Three Day rule, however, because a voluntary resignation is not an adverse employment action. Therefore, you would likely win the lawsuit long before it ever gets to a jury.
That is exactly what happened in a recent lawsuit called Ballato v. Comcast Corp., even though the employee who sued was protected by the Family Medical Leave Act. So, take comfort if you already have this Three Day rule in your employee handbook. If you do not have this in your handbook, please consider including it.