Doctor appointtmt detail
Shadowfax
910 Posts
Guidance please. Long term hourly employee with no obvious medical problems (she broke her ankle last summer but is healed and rehabbed) is now taking off anywhere to an hour to four hours, several times a week for Dr appointments. She has plenty of pto available and there is no FMLA. This employee is a member of a 6 person clerical team that is very busy. This employee has a history of avoiding work at any opportunity and shoving it off on others, a history which has not been dealt with very well by mgmt. Now her boss wants to ask what the hell is going on with these Dr appointments almost every day and especially the 4 hour ones - he is suspicious she is just using up her sick time in preparation to leave us. What can we really ask? How much should we know? Any wise advise? Thanks.
Comments
If she complains say she can decide to work with you......or work somewhere else. If it continues fire her.
My $0.02 worth.....
The Balloonman
PORK
>administer an absence policy in the face of
>available sick time?
Shadow, this is one of the all-time, classic HR questions. If we ever figure this one out, next we'll go to work on curing the common cold and then world peace! :-?
Here are some thoughts, in no particular order, I've developed over the years.
1. Once you've decided to have sick leave, you must -- to a certain extent -- accept the fact that some people are going to abuse it, no matter what controls you put in place. You can expend more time and energy trying to manage the abuse than you will ever be able to save by keeping people from using it inappropriately. Some people will disagree with me on this, but after doing this for 22 years, I'm learning to cut my losses on futile tasks.
2. That said, you still have to put some controls in place. You need a policy that has the following elements: First, require documentation for a certain length/amount of absence with the proviso that you can require documentation for an absence of any length if the leave use is suspect. Second, the policy also needs to state that if a person overuses leave, even with a medical excuse, that person is subject to termination. Where I work, we define "overuse" as running out of all applicable paid leave and going into LWOP. Third, #2 is null and void if the absence is legally protected (FMLA, ADA). This drives supervisors nuts, but I tell them to not even bug me about an "attendance problem" until FMLA is exhausted (I know your current situation is not FMLA; I'm trying to be more general here).
3. Once such a policy is in place, yes, by requiring documentation, you will learn about things (such as that the person has an ADA-qualifying condition) that you wished you never knew. But these facts will probably come to light at some point anyway, like when you start talking about termination.
I welcome further discussion on this topic, because I'll bet I've spent more time working with supervisors on attendance issues than any other performance or conduct problem.
Also, as already suggested, I would bring her in and tell her she has been excessively absent in recent weeks and this is unacceptable and her attendance must improve. She may divulge details at that meeting that would shed light on the subject. I also would advise her that she needs to schedule her appointments later in the day. You said she gives you a week's notice. This tells me that there is flexibility there. Good luck.
We do a bit of a combination - require Drs. notes confirming appts and also clearing the EE to return to work (just in case some other issues are arising). These notes are required at the discretion of the supervisor and often are suggested by HR as a tool to verify that at least the EE is seeing a medical provider.
The next best tool we have is not defining, but mentioning "Excessive Absence." We are considering the method suggested by Whirlwind, but that can obviously put you in a box when someone has built up a ton of time. So we can currently tell an EE that it does not matter if he/she has time available on the books - we need them at their desk, doing their job, and if they cannot do that, we will find someone who can. Then we start the disciplinary process as NJJel suggests and let things proceed from there.
PS Anyone know where ol Don is? Havn't seen his posts lately.
I won't go into a great amount of detail, but there was quite a bit of controversy - I sent you a private message which will give you some more information.