to ask our former-employee's new employer if they were given a reference purporting to be from us.

[namelessposter]

Abridged back story: a former sales employee of ours left at the end of Oct on civil terms, after a year of OK (but not great) performance, telling us they were planning on leaving the country to stay with family, and not returning to the industry.

3 weeks later, they have just turned up in an equivalent role with a competitor about 2 miles away. As they are entitled to do.

BUT on their last day with us, they sent an email to their personal mail, with a blank copy of our company headed paper. Then deleted all their sent mail and logged off.

We restore any mail deleted by exiting employees from back-ups as a matter of course, hence why we know this.

Their new employer didn't approach us for a reference. The employee was with us for 14 months, and that they worked with us is well referenced in the public domain. The new employer is a big company, so seems unlikely that their HR dept wouldn't have asked for references. The employee had form for lying to clients (and we are currently clearing up a couple of messes they left behind in this respect, which have come to light after she's left).

Would you ask the new employer if they were given a written reference on our headed paper, purporting to be from us, and if so, let them know it's a fake?

What Percy said.

The reference stuff is a red herring. Misrepresenting your organisation, fraud or theft are your concern. As is damage to your company's reputation so I would not want to be putting stuff in the paper, contacting your competitor to tip them off or any of the other ill advised suggestions on the thread.

x-posted with Ribena who has used very similar phrases!

I assume that the people who think that an ex employee gifting themselves the means to create fraudulent correspondence purporting to be from their former employer is nothing to worry about or is none of the OP's business live in a bizarro parallel universe.

As others have said, a fake reference is the least concerning possibility. The OP's business could be genuinely damaged by fake correspondence to existing clients, not least given that the ex employee works for a competitor and is evidently already in touch with at least one other client of the OP's business.

OP says ex-employee was perfectly entitled to start at other company. So presumably no restrictive covenant.

There could still be restrictive covenants about client data, contacting former employees etc.

We made someone redundant and they left on good terms to a good job with a competitor and a good reference. Happy days. Then he tried to poach our sales team. Well, that soured a perfectly good relationship when we went all legal on his arse [actual HR term honest ]

There is no reason for her to have emailed the headed paper but also no reason for you to suspect she has used it. She may well have used previous employers as references and not mentioned your company. She may well have taken the letterhead as a badly thought through, last day 'this might be useful' clear up, along with the stapler and her favourite mug.

It is very unlikely that new co would accept a written letter of recommendation without phoning or emailing old co directly so chances are she never used it.

She might actually be totally above board. But if you ring new co now and ask about her position, her references or make any insinuation at all that she is not to be trusted, she could lose her job for no real reason.

I'd let her go and be glad she's gone.

Do you think that she has used the headed paper to contact your existing customers to tell them she is moving on to New Co in an attempt to take them with her?

She's been gone less than a month and already there are a few causes for OP's concern. I would be seriously wondering what else was going to come out of the woodwork in the months to come. I'm not sure how your business operates, OP, but I'd be making sure that I (or someone else who is senior in the company) made a visit to see all my clients without delay. Start with the most valuable ones, dress it up as "regular account management meeting" or whatever best suits your industry, and use the meeting as a chance to cement relations and determine whether ex-employee has misrepresented your company or worse. It won't be time wasted - even if there isn't a single instance of ex-employee sullying your name or something.

" There is no reason for her to have emailed the headed paper but also no reason for you to suspect she has used it"

If someone went well out of their way to find out your burglar alarm code would you be reassured by no evidence they'd used it yet ?

cheesecakemom If the ex employee falsifed a reference, how do you think she could sue the OP's company for costing her the job? She would have lost it through her own actions.

OP I agree with others that you should check if anything else was emailed, and the client meetings suggested sounds good too.

The evidence of lying, which the OP already has, coupled with the letterhead, does suggest something else may be going on. And it could be something that damages the OP's company.

If the reference gives a glowing report of the employee and they turn out to be shit, their new employer will think your company can't be much cop.
There is no good reason for her to take the headed paper. It needs addressing with them directly, warning her of consequences of naughtiness.

I once worked for a place where the cook was ill with back issues for many months. We had real trouble covering her absence. We then got a request for a reference from her new employer who was employing her when she was supposed to be ill. Not sure what the cook thought would happen.

The way forward is to give her a call and ask her why she did this.

Large companies do not ask you to provide your own reference. They have HR staff for that.

Yes by all means pursue her if you get proof that she has done something wrong but I feel it is going a step to far ringing up the company. It seems somehow that you want it to end badly for her.

If she was that bad you need not have passed her probationary period.

Well, you certainly have to do something. Putting the responsibility on her to "make good" her mistakes could be naive, but giving her an opportunity to come clean would be a gracious compromise... before following up with clients and her employer.

Our cook was not blessed with brains. Or an ability to cook.

Jesus Christ. People are absolutely determined to think the worst aren't they?

Has it not occured to anybody that perhaps she wanted to make sure that she had the companies details on file? Companies don't last forever, I know that the first four companies I worked for are now non-existent and now whenever I leave anywhere I make sure that I have a copy of the details of a company I have worked at on file in hard copy incase I need the details in future for CVs etc and there isn't anything available on the net.

I really think this is a case of people putting together 2+2 and making 57,846,576.

If that is the case, aermingers, it's still right to make contact with her first. There's also the issues she has left, to discuss

Just want to correct something said further up the thread. I disagree that employers have an absolute right to look at employee's work email account. A robust IT policy which says that employees should have no expectation of privacy will help but from a data protection perspective an employer needs to be really careful at looking at an employee's clearly personal emails, even if sent from a work email account.