So you have this particular staff member who is causing you a massive headache.

They did not come in on Thursday. Not Friday either. Their phone rings out. Nobody in the office has heard from them.

It is now Monday morning. You are short-handed, the work is piling up on everybody else, and what you really want to do is take them off the payroll today and be done with it.

To be fair, your frustration is completely justified. Being left to cover a shift at eight in the morning with no explanation is not a small thing. But acting while you are angry can turn an absence problem into a dismissal claim.

Please do not treat the employment as ended this morning. Check that they are safe. Count the working days properly. Then send one official letter asking them to make contact within 48 hours and explain what happened.

What happens next depends on whether they reply, and what they say.

Can I dismiss an employee after three working days of AWOL?

Not automatically. Under Malaysia’s Employment Act 1955, absence for more than two consecutive working days without prior leave may be treated as a breach of the employment contract.

But that rule has an exception where the employee had a reasonable excuse and informed you, or genuinely tried to, at the earliest opportunity.

That is why day three is not a magic button. At that point, you still do not know whether you have somebody who walked away from the job or somebody who could not get through to you.

The letter is how you find out. If they reply, you assess the explanation. If they do not, you have a record showing that you tried to reach them before deciding what to do.

That record matters because the employee may still challenge the dismissal later. Nothing in this procedure makes a claim impossible. It puts you in a better position to explain the decision you made if you do fire them because of this.

How do I count the two consecutive working days?

Under Malaysia’s Employment Act 1955, the threshold is more than two consecutive working days without prior leave. The employee may still fall within the statutory exception if they had a reasonable excuse and informed you, or genuinely tried to, at the earliest opportunity.

Working days. Not calendar days.

For somebody who works Monday to Friday and first goes missing on Thursday:

Thursday is day one.
Friday is day two.
Saturday and Sunday do not count.
Monday is day three.

Let Monday finish. If they are still absent, Tuesday is the ordinary point to send the contact letter.

If your staff work shifts, six-day weeks or rotating rosters, use that employee’s roster. Do not count the days your office happens to be open.

What should I check before sending an AWOL letter?

Before sending an AWOL letter, check whether the employee is safe and whether they tried to contact somebody in the business. Those facts may decide whether the reasonable-excuse and notification exception applies, and they give you a record if the decision is challenged later.

First, open the personnel file and call the emergency contact.

Then ask the two or three people who work nearest to the employee whether they heard anything. Check the usual work channels too. A message to a supervisor still matters even if it never reached you.

You are trying to answer one question: did this person abandon the job, or are they unable to reach the business?

From an empty chair, those two situations look exactly the same.

Write down each attempt as you make it. Note the time, the number called and what happened. A call log made this morning is more useful than a memory reconstructed months later.

What if the family says there is a mental health crisis?

Pause the termination decision and find out what you are dealing with.

I am an employment lawyer, not a doctor. A psychiatric certificate may change the issue from discipline to sick leave, but it does not do that automatically. You still need to see the certificate, check when somebody tried to contact you and understand what prevented the employee from doing so.

You can arrange cover and continue recording the absence. The part you pause is the decision to end the employment.

What AWOL letter should I send, and how long should I give the employee?

Send a short AWOL show cause letter stating the missed working days and asking the employee to make contact. Give them 48 hours to make contact, then a fair further period for a full explanation and supporting documents if they respond.

In the Vault, M3.11 calls it a Notice of Breach of Contract, but it does both jobs. It records the possible breach and gives the employee a proper chance to explain the absence before you decide what to do.

For this narrow AWOL allegation, that written opportunity is also your due inquiry. The letter should do five things:

State the exact working days they have missed.
Say that no leave was requested or approved.
Ask them to contact you and explain what happened and why they are absent.
Give them 48 hours from the date of the letter to make contact, and say what may happen if they remain silent.
If they make contact, give them a fair period to provide the full explanation and supporting documents. Depending on the facts, 72 hours to a week is often more appropriate.

That first 48 hours is a reasonable period for checking whether the employee is still responding. It is not the deadline for a full show cause answer. Neither period appears in the Act, and the end of either period does not make termination automatically safe.

Send the contact letter through every channel you normally use:

Registered post to the last address in your payroll records.
WhatsApp.
Email.
A phone call, with the call log kept.

Keep the postal receipt, screenshots of your chats and any returned envelope. A returned letter shows that you tried to send it. It does not prove that the employee received it.

Using the normal channels also shows that you were genuinely trying to reach the employee. If WhatsApp is how your office communicates every day, it makes little sense to rely on post alone when somebody goes missing.

If you want the letters themselves, the AWOL pair is in the Vault. The first is the AWOL show cause letter. The second has one route for silence and another for an explanation that was considered but rejected. A medical explanation, grievance or evidence that somebody was told may still change the route. Both are written in English and Bahasa Melayu. You can request the fee schedule on the Vault page. It is sent privately by email, and asking for it does not start an engagement.

What happens if the employee replies to the AWOL letter?

The reply does not erase the absence or prevent dismissal, but you must assess it before choosing the legal route. Under Malaysia’s Employment Act 1955, the result turns on the explanation: a reasonable excuse plus an attempt to inform you may displace the AWOL breach route, while an inadequate explanation may leave the absence capable of supporting misconduct dismissal after due inquiry.

If the employee cannot establish that exception, being AWOL for more than two consecutive working days can itself amount to gross misconduct serious enough to warrant dismissal.

M3.11 has already put the AWOL allegation to them and given them the chance to explain. You may move from that same letter into the misconduct route if their answer is not acceptable. You do not have to start the whole process again.

We will cover the wider misconduct dismissal procedure in a separate article. Once it is published, this paragraph will link to it.

In practice, it usually takes you down one of these paths.

“I was in hospital. Here is my MC.”

Ask for the certificate and ask what they did to contact you when the sick leave started.

A certified MC does not answer the whole question. The law also looks at whether the employee informed you, or tried to inform you, within 48 hours of the sick leave starting.

Somebody who was unconscious in hospital is not in the same position as somebody who had their phone all week and chose not to message the office. The explanation and evidence decide what you do next.

“I told my supervisor.”

Check it.

Speak to the supervisor. Look at the message. Check the date and what was actually said. The fact that the information did not reach payroll does not mean the employee never tried to inform the company.

“You forced me out.”

Do not ignore the letter and wait for the employee to make the next move. Send the same contact letter and keep the same record.

If the employee later says that your conduct forced them to leave, they generally carry the burden of proving a breach serious enough to justify that position. Mere unreasonable behaviour is not, by itself, the legal test. That does not mean their allegation is harmless.

If there was a row, a demotion, a pay dispute or a serious change to their job before they disappeared, stop processing the matter as an ordinary AWOL case. The facts need to be looked at properly.

“I had a reason, but I could not contact anyone.”

This is where the exception to the AWOL rule matters. Ask what happened, why they could not contact you and when they first tried.

You do not have to accept every explanation. You do have to assess it before you act.

What happens if the employee ignores the AWOL letter?

In Malaysia, silence does not automatically end the employment. If the section 15(2) threshold is met and no explanation arrives, the employer may proceed on the contractual breach route, but the employee may still bring a dismissal claim.

You now have evidence of the absence, your attempts to check on the employee and the opportunity you gave them to explain. If you still hear nothing, you can issue the termination letter on the no-reply route. In the Vault, that is M3.12 Scenario A.

This is the contractual route. They broke the employment contract. You accept that breach and bring the employment to an end. In that technical sense, they are the one who dismissed you first.

However, keep in mind that even then, the employee may still make a dismissal claim. If that happens, the question will not only be how many days they missed. It will also be what you did to find out why they were missing before you ended the employment.

Your contact letter, call log and delivery records answer that question.

If the matter needs advocacy, we work alongside a separate firm that handles that stage. We may remain on the employment analysis within our own engagement.

So, do I still need to pay them?

Yes. You still have to pay the wages they earned up to their last actual day of work, subject to the deductions the Act allows.

However, you do not have to pay them in lieu of the notice period they failed to serve. If the employee owes the company an indemnity in lieu of notice, the Act permits that indemnity to be deducted from their final wages. If the final wages do not cover it, the employer may bring a claim for the balance through the Labour Department.

What should I do today if an employee is AWOL?

Start with the employee’s safety and the record, not the dismissal. Count the working days against the Malaysian AWOL threshold only after checking the emergency contact and the usual work channels.

Call the emergency contact.
Ask the people who work nearest to the employee.
Record every attempt to reach them.
Count the employee’s working days.
Send the AWOL show cause letter through every normal channel.
Read any reply before deciding the legal route.
If there is no reply, make the termination decision on the record you now have. Do not treat it as automatic.

This process is not about being soft on somebody who has left you short. It is about finding out what happened before you make a decision you cannot take back.

In our view, ending up in the Industrial Court is a failure. A failure of our paperwork, of your systems, and of a working relationship.

The half hour you spend checking this morning may save you from spending months explaining why you did not.

Which Malaysian laws govern AWOL and abandonment?

The main AWOL rule is section 15(2) of the Employment Act 1955, which sets the working-day threshold and preserves the reasonable-excuse and notification exception. Section 13(2) covers termination without notice for wilful breach, while section 14(1) covers misconduct dismissal after due inquiry.

The article keeps the sections out of the practical steps so you can follow the answer without reading a statute. These are the provisions behind the underlined legal points.

When the absence becomes a breach: Section 15(2) of the Employment Act 1955 covers absence for more than two consecutive working days without prior leave. It also preserves the employee’s position where there was a reasonable excuse and the employee informed, or attempted to inform, the employer at the earliest opportunity.

An MC and the 48-hour notification rule: Section 60F(2) of the Employment Act 1955 treats certified sick leave as absence without permission and reasonable excuse where the employee did not inform, or attempt to inform, the employer within 48 hours of it starting.

The two routes after M3.11: Section 13(2) allows either party to end the contract without notice where the other party has wilfully breached a condition of the contract. That is the ordinary route where the employee remains silent. Section 14(1) allows dismissal for misconduct after due inquiry. That route becomes relevant where the employee responds but the explanation does not answer the AWOL allegation.

Why M3.11 also acts as the show cause letter: Section 14(1) requires due inquiry before a misconduct dismissal but does not prescribe its form. M3.11 states the AWOL allegation, requests a written explanation and evidence, and warns that dismissal may follow. The firm’s position is that, for this narrow allegation, the letter provides the due inquiry. Silence leads to the contractual breach route. A reply must be assessed before the employer chooses the misconduct route. Forty-eight hours is the firm’s practice period for checking whether the employee is still responding. If they respond and need to give a full explanation with documents, the employer should set a fair further period. Neither deadline is stated in the Act.

Final wages and notice indemnity: Section 21(1) of the Employment Act 1955 governs final wages where the employer terminates without notice under section 13 or section 14. Section 24(2)(b) permits a deduction for an indemnity due to the employer under section 13(1), and section 69(2)(iii) allows an employer to bring that indemnity claim before the Director General.

A later dismissal claim: Section 20(1) of the Industrial Relations Act 1967 allows an employee who considers that they were dismissed without just cause or excuse to make written representations for reinstatement.

If the employee says they were forced out: The contract test and burden point are drawn from Tan Lay Peng v RHB Bank Berhad & Anor [2024] 5 MLRA 171.

Why registered post matters: The Rules of Court 2012 and the Evidence Act 1950 provide an evidential benchmark for sending legal documents and proving the ordinary course of post. They do not make an AWOL letter a court document or prove that a returned letter was received.

This article is for information and education only and does not constitute legal advice. Employment law changes, and how it applies depends entirely on your specific facts. Consult a licensed Malaysian advocate and solicitor before taking disciplinary or termination action.