How do you handle a subordinate who takes excessive sick leave?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Unless you are a doctor, engineer, or some other critical worker, taking sick leave is really not that big of a deal. Many people think that their jobs are so important until someone drops dead and you realize how easily it is to replace someone. I don't think any manager or employee should take sick leave or poor performance that seriously. So many of these paper pushing jobs mean absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of things. I know someone who was so loyal and never used his sick leave. He had HUNDREDS of hours. Then he dropped dead from a sudden heart attack and all the leave returned back to the government. His coworkers wondering what happened. The man should have used his sick leave to take care of his health!

OP is not talking about regular earned sick leave. They're talking about burning up sick leave and then taking leave without pay beyond that. That'd not to say that there aren't legit reasons to need to take LWOP, but it definitely warrants a deeper discussion.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
but also, anyone that retires with thousands of hours of sick leave is really bad at math, which is not a feature in my line of work.

This! Don’t hire me to critically evaluate long term valuations of intangible assets and then get mad when I plan to use all of my sick leave before I retire.