Absenteeism and abandonment

Absenteeism and abandonment sound like the same topic. They aren’t. One is an ordinary valid-reason question. The other can mean there was never a dismissal to assess at all.

What you’ll be able to do

• Treat unauthorised or excessive absence as an ordinary s.387(a) valid-reason question, not a jurisdictional one.
• Recognise when prolonged, unexplained non-contact might instead be genuine abandonment — a different legal concept that can end the matter at the jurisdictional gate under s.386.
• Apply the three things the Commission looks for before accepting that an employee abandoned their job, so you don’t wrongly treat a hospitalised or incapacitated employee as having walked away.

Two different problems, not one

Absenteeism is a conduct or performance question. The employee is still employed; the question is whether their pattern of absence — unauthorised days off, a Monday/Friday pattern, failing to notify or provide evidence — gives the employer a valid reason to dismiss under s.387(a). It’s assessed exactly like any other valid-reason case (see Module 5).

Abandonment of employment is a different question entirely, and it sits at the jurisdictional gate covered in Module 1. The idea is that the employee’s conduct — viewed objectively — can itself bring the employment to an end, meaning the employer never dismissed anyone within the meaning of s.386. If the Commission accepts genuine abandonment, the unfair dismissal application fails for want of a dismissal, regardless of how good or bad the merits would otherwise have looked.

Why the distinction matters for an adviser: get this wrong on either side and the result is bad. Tell an employer “that’s abandonment” too readily, and you can lose a dismissal that was otherwise defensible on the merits, or wrongly write off an employee who was in hospital. Tell an employee “you were dismissed” when the Commission finds they walked away, and the claim fails at the first hurdle.

Absenteeism as a valid reason (s.387(a))

Persistent, unauthorised absence — and a persistent failure to follow lawful and reasonable directions about notifying and evidencing absences — can be a valid reason for dismissal in its own right.

Clark v Woolworths Group is a clear illustration. The employee had accumulated 92 days of absence in the prior year, had been directed on multiple occasions (October 2022, May 2023, August 2024, February 2025) to notify the company of intended absences and provide supporting documentation, and continued not to comply even after a final written warning. The Commission found [2025] FWC 2226 at [32]: the absenteeism itself meant he was not meeting the inherent requirement of attending for work, and separately, he had [2025] FWC 2226 at [33].

Sympathetic circumstances don’t automatically excuse non-compliance. The employee in that case had genuine personal hardship — his own illness and his son’s mental health — and the Commission accepted that. But it still found his explanations for repeatedly failing to produce evidence unconvincing, asking why he couldn’t see a different doctor, use a telehealth service, or try another pharmacy for a witnessed declaration [2025] FWC 2226 at [41]. Genuine hardship explains an absence; it doesn’t automatically excuse a failure to follow a reasonable, previously-warned-about process for evidencing it.

But don’t over-reach the allegation. In Umerez v Flanders Electric, the employer relied on several absence days as part of its reason for dismissal. For two of those days — taken close in time to a period of authorised, certified sick leave — the Commission found no valid reason, even without a medical certificate for those specific two days [2021] FWC 1217 at [91]. By contrast, a separate instance of arriving 1.5 hours late, where the employee made no claim of illness, injury or emergency, [2021] FWC 1217 at [95]. The lesson: not every absence is equally weak just because it lacks paperwork, and not every absence is equally strong just because it’s unexplained — look at what else is going on around it (recent certified leave, a declared emergency) before deciding it supports a valid reason.

Abandonment of employment (s.386)

The core test comes from a Full Bench “Abandonment of Employment” test case, quoted (and confirmed against the quoting decision’s own text) in two decisions in this corpus:

A separately-cited authority puts the same idea slightly differently: the test is whether the [2023] FWC 2471 at [20] and based on facts reasonably known to the employer at the time, that the employee has repudiated their obligations — from Shamrock Consultancy Pty Ltd v Norma Ah San, not independently located in this corpus; check it against the original before relying on it.

What the Commission requires before accepting abandonment

Three things recur across the decisions in this corpus before a prolonged, unexplained absence will be treated as abandonment rather than something else:

1. Genuine attempts to contact the employee. [2023] FWC 2471 at [67] — an employer that merely assumes and acts, without checking, is at risk. In Subedi v Crispy Bakehouse, the employer had a reasonable basis to suspect abandonment after the employee failed to return from overseas leave as planned — but the Commission held [2025] FWC 3612 at [15], and because it never did, the abandonment objection failed and a later dismissal was found instead.
2. A reasonable period of silence, not a single missed day. In Fathers v Global Line Marking Services, the employee missed [2021] FWC 6333 at [20], after a manager had tried to reach him. The Commission found [2021] FWC 6333 at [42]. Similarly in Cornell v Action Events Group, the employee went silent for weeks after his last certified sick leave period expired, ignoring a letter warning that continued non-contact would be treated as abandonment, and the Commission found [2021] FWC 2322 at [11].
3. No plausible alternative explanation for the silence. This is the protective side of the test, and it’s the one that matters most for employees who are genuinely unable to make contact — through hospitalisation, incapacity, or a documented condition the employer already knows about. In Liu v Itsumo Aus, the employer argued the employee had abandoned his job during a period of non-contact. The Commission disagreed: the employee was on workers’ compensation, complying with his rehabilitation provider’s return-to-work plan, and the employer knew it. It found he [2023] FWC 2471 at [71] — the absence had a complete, employer-known explanation, so it could not be read as a renunciation of the contract.

The jurisdictional stakes

If the Commission accepts genuine abandonment, there was no dismissal “on the employer’s initiative” within the meaning of s.386(1)(a) — so the application fails at the gateway covered in Module 1, before anyone gets to s.387 at all. That cuts both ways for advice:

• Acting for the employer: don’t assume abandonment protects you from an unfair dismissal claim just because the employee went quiet. Unless you can show genuine, documented attempts to contact them, a reasonable period, and no plausible innocent explanation, you risk simply being found to have dismissed them anyway — without any of the s.387 process you’d otherwise have run.
• Acting for the employee: if there’s a real, demonstrable reason they couldn’t make contact, that is often the whole case at the jurisdictional stage — get the medical or other evidence of incapacity in early, because it goes directly to whether there was a dismissal at all, not just to harshness later.

How absenteeism and abandonment arguments fail

Adviser checklist

Practice scenario: the unanswered roster

Decisions cited

Check each paragraph reference against the published decision on the FWC website before relying on it. The Full Bench “Abandonment of Employment” test case and Shamrock Consultancy Pty Ltd v Norma Ah San are cited as quoted in later decisions and still need checking in the original — neither appears as a direct record in this corpus. Rows marked “partial” confirm the proposition pinpoint only.