FMLA

indiana

How do I evaluate an employee in the categories of reliability, availability, interpersonal relationships with cooworkers and overall, when they are on intermittent FMLA? In this instance, she suffers from migraines, cooincidentally they seem to appear every Monday, so she calls in sick and says she is covered by FMLA. This job is team oriented, and when she's not here, her teammates must do her job in addition to their own. This creates dissention in the group. Our HR department has approved her FMLA request and yet I am supposed to evaluate her work. Her absenteeism directly affects all areas of her job performance. Is it fair for me to comment about her absenteeism during an evaluation? PS. She really is an excellent employee WHEN SHE'S HERE.

Rockie

You have to treat the employee as if the FMLA absences did not exist. If she is dependable and reliable when she is there, then she is a dependable and a reliable employee. Anything less will be seen as retaliation for exercising FMLA rights.

psrcello

I agree with Rockie - you have to remain totally blind to the fact that the employee is on intermittent FMLA. Supervisors in my company have the same frustrations, and I have a hard time explaining to them that they can't use time lost under FMLA against the employee for attendance, productivity, reliability, or other parts of the performance evaluation.

Think of it like this - I used to have a boss who asked his female employees during their performance evaluations whether they intended to have another baby in the next 12 months, because if they did, he wouldn't approve them for a raise. His rationale - missing time to have a baby would affect their productivity, so it was clearly a work-related situation. While that may sound totally absurd, the intermittent FMLA is really no different from a discrimination standpoint.