Absence without contact, Kieran Doyle, Brindle and Co Homewares
Abandonment of employment letter with every contact attempt listed
An abandonment of employment letter is the written step an employer takes when someone stops coming to work and cannot be reached. It has to record the absences and every attempt at contact, give a fair deadline, and say what may happen without deciding it yet, because an Australian employer that treats silence as a resignation can end up defending a dismissal.
The document, page by page
Every page as it renders and as it prints, with nothing summarised. Read the wording before you reuse it.
Section by section
What each section is for, so you can keep the ones you need and drop the rest.
- Letterhead and addressee
- Brindle and Co Homewares ledger letterhead with ABN, Monday 5 October 2026, sent by email and registered post, private and confidential.
- Subject
- Absence from work since 28 September 2026.
- The absences
- Five rostered shifts from Monday 28 September to Friday 2 October missed with no contact, and concern for the employee.
- Contact attempts
- A table of five attempts with date and time, method and result.
- Deadline
- A warning callout asking for contact by 5 pm Friday 9 October, with a name and number.
- Consequence
- The employer may end the employment, would confirm it in writing and pay notice and leave, and no decision has been made.
- Signature block
- One party, the store manager, with a date line.
How to adapt this document
For an employee who has been absent for only one or two shifts, send a short welfare message instead and keep this letter for when contact has failed over several days, because a formal letter too early reads as a threat. For a workplace covered by an enterprise agreement, check whether the agreement has its own absence procedure and follow its timing in the deadline callout. For an employee you know has been unwell, change the tone of the opening paragraph to ask after their health first, and offer a phone call with someone other than their direct manager.
Which law the terms follow
The letter is written for a national system employer in Victoria under the Fair Work Act 2009. The Act does not define abandonment, so the safe course is to treat the end of employment as something the employer may decide only after genuine attempts at contact, and to pay notice under the National Employment Standards if it does. The Fair Work Commission treats a termination as at the employer's initiative when the employer's action is what ends it, which is why the contact log and the open deadline matter if an unfair dismissal claim follows.
What makes this document work
The contact attempts are evidence, not a complaint
The table logs five attempts over five days: two mobile calls, an email to a personal address, a call to the emergency contact Rosa Doyle and a text, each with a time and a result. If the employment ends, this is the record that shows the employer tried before deciding.
The deadline is specific and easy to meet
The callout gives 5 pm on Friday 9 October 2026, four days after the letter, names Nadia Brindle and a direct number, and says a medical certificate can follow later. A person in hospital or in crisis can respond with one phone call.
No decision is made in the letter
The closing paragraph says the employer may decide to end the employment, that it would confirm the date in writing and pay notice under the National Employment Standards and accrued annual leave, and that no decision has been made yet. That keeps the next step open and fair.
Questions people ask
Is abandonment of employment the same as resigning?
Not automatically. In Australia the Fair Work Commission looks at who really ended the employment. If an employer simply treats absence as a resignation and the employee later shows they were ill or unable to call, the end of employment can be treated as a dismissal at the employer's initiative. That is why this letter asks for contact before anything is decided.
How many days of absence count as abandonment?
There is no fixed number in the Fair Work Act, and modern awards no longer contain abandonment clauses. What matters is whether the absence is unexplained for an unreasonable time and whether the employer genuinely tried to make contact. Five rostered days with five recorded attempts, as here, is a reasonable point to write formally.
Should the letter go by email or post?
Both, as this one does. Email is fast and leaves a timestamp, while registered post to the home address shows the letter was sent somewhere the employee is likely to see it even without phone or internet access. Keep proof of both sends with the contact log.
What if the employee replies with a good reason?
Then the absence is dealt with as what it turns out to be, such as personal leave, an emergency or a welfare issue, and not as abandonment. The letter already says a medical certificate can follow later, so a late certificate should not be held against someone who rang before the deadline.
What is paid if the employment does end?
Everything owed up to the last day, including accrued annual leave and any notice the National Employment Standards require when the employer ends the employment. The letter promises this in writing, which matters if the employee later disputes how the relationship ended or what their final pay should have been.
Build your own in about a minute
The button below opens the generator with this use case already described. Change the wording to match your own, generate, then edit anything you like.
Make one like thisOther document examples
Final written warning template that lists every warning already given
A final warning is only final if the record shows what came before it, and most fail because the earlier steps were verbal and undated. This one lists three prior warnings with dates and who gave them, four dated late starts since the last one, the response given at the meeting, and the consequence in a single sentence.
Redundancy letter template with the pay calculated line by line
A redundancy letter has to prove three things at once: that the job has gone, that the employee was consulted before the decision, and that the money is right. This one names the volume fall, dates the consultation, sets four weeks notice, and shows the $24,168.75 worked out line by line.
Show cause letter template with three dated allegations and a deadline
A show cause letter asks someone to answer before anything is decided, so it has to state what is alleged precisely enough to answer and say clearly that no finding has been made. This one numbers three allegations with their dates, lists the four documents relied on, and gives five business days to respond.
Want the steps in the builder? Read Create a document with AI, then Document builder components. For everything this generator can do, see the document maker.
Written and checked by the OneCraft team. Last checked .