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

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]You need to meet with HR and discuss what you can and can’t do. Then decide what you want to do. My DH and I often talk about how [b]you know most if not everything you need to know about an employee based on their leave balance.
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I would definitely let them go if possible. This isn’t going to change. [/quote]

What do you mean by this?!

I tend to sock away leave and take it in one go, while some of my US colleagues believe the company can't go on without them if they take one day.  My European colleagues on the other hand all take leave at exactly the same time to do exactly the same things - beach trip to France in the summer; skiing in the Alps in the winter.  I think with our varied culture here your statement comes off a bit myopic.[/quote]

I agree with this poster. Absent some extenuating circumstances (just back from maternity, deployed spouse, house fire, special needs kid), a white collar office employee who is living “paycheck to paycheck” on their leave balance is rarely a top or even better that mediocre employee. I have managed teams for 15 years, cared for my own elderly parents, gestated and birthed 2 children while my spouse worked in person 5 days a week. You can make every excuse in the book, but I have dozens of current and past employees who somehow figure out how to get their kid to therapy, rebuild a house after a hurricane, and more without running leave to zero or seriously disrupting the team. The employees who always have some sort of family drama or excuse are full of excuses about their work too. It’s too much of a pattern to ignore. [/quote]

+1000

With the generous sick leave at the government, no one should be at a zero balance absent very serious circumstances. And yet there are many employees who don’t have those circumstances and are constantly at a leave balance of zero—and it is virtually always the low performers. Excuse after excuse after excuse— for why they can’t make it to work and for why their work isn’t done when they do.

The people getting all riled up about this clearly don’t manage people. Or not a lot of them anyway. [/quote]

I’m a fed, get good performance reviews and find it hard to keep my sick leave above zero. A friend who is a manager and has been a fed over 15 years does as well. I suspect it’s because we both have children that have needed a lot of appointments. We both had our children before the federal government offered any paid leave (my husband in private industry had 6 weeks paternity leave) and that (plus kids getting sick in daycare) ran our balances down. My younger daughter has “graduated” from speech therapy but, for a few years she had an hour of speech therapy and an hour of occupational therapy a week. Luckily my husband’s job is flexible and he covers a lot of her appointments but the weeks I have to take her to these that’s all the sick leave I earn (ie 4 hrs every two weeks). In between having kids and my daughter’s appointments, a few years ago I got a concussion and had to take a full week of leave for that. The weeks I cover her appointments I try to work extra hours another day during the week, but that can he hard. My manager friend has two SN children so that’s an even bigger demand.

I do think having a whole separate full-time job is a problem though. For instance, they could probably work extra hours to cover their sick leave if it were not for the extra job. [/quote]

I don’t buy the SN garbage. I had a women work for me with two SN kids, she picked my company as one mile her house and I let her sneak out to do  appointments and come back later if needed to finish up. Her husband was a teacher who also worked within one mile of home. They chose careers and work locations to deal with their SN kids. [/quote]

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