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We have employee A that starts the year with 200 hours and uses 160 in the first 4 months of the year so on May 1, they have 40 hours left. This person could have been taking a week of vacation each month or they could have been calling in 5 days a month. It doesn't matter, either way they've used 4 weeks of their time in the first 4 months of the year. They now have 40 hours or 5 days to use over the final 8 months of the year. For the rest of the year, this employee manages their time wisely and doesn't request any more time off until Thanksgiving, wanting the day before off to get things ready for Thanksgiving day.
Then there's employee B that also has 200 hours. This person will call in or request days off, but not at the rate that employee A does. This person requests Halloween off so on November 1, they have also used 160 of their 200 hours, leaving them with 5 days. This employee also puts in a request for the day before Thanksgiving.
I have 2 questions here.
1) Can you really say that employee A has abused their leave when they now have to same amount of time left as employee B?
2) Assuming that seniority isn't a factor when approving days off, can you justify denying employee A the day off just because this employee burnt through a bunch of time at the beginning of the year?
To answer your question, no I don't think a company would allow somebody to call in everyday until their 1800 hours was gone. Assuming it's a 40 hour work week, that would be calling in for 45 weeks. Depending on the job, you may need recertified when you came back before you were even allowed to do your job. If nothing else, the employee would probably need a refresher on how to do their job and even then, wouldn't be very productive for I'm guessing at least 1 week, probably more like 2 weeks though.
First, it would matter to me if they EE A were taking scheduled vacation or calling in unscheduled 5 days a month. What if all the employees did that. Who would do the work? If the company wanted to offer a 4 day work week they would. You would never get to May without me talking to you about using your leave that way. And, you would have already been told that when I discussed my expectations regarding leave usage.
Part of not abusing leave is building and maintaining a balance of leave in the event you need it for a real emergency or illness. This is especially true in places that let you build balances to carry over year to year.
Whether or not you are abusing your leave has no bearing on who gets scheduled days off around holidays assuming you still have leave to take. My practice was to get employees to take turns, choose either Xmas or Thanksgiving, choose the day before or the day after, etc.
First, it would matter to me if they EE A were taking scheduled vacation or calling in unscheduled 5 days a month. What if all the employees did that. Who would do the work? If the company wanted to offer a 4 day work week they would. You would never get to May without me talking to you about using your leave that way. And, you would have already been told that when I discussed my expectations regarding leave usage.
Part of not abusing leave is building and maintaining a balance of leave in the event you need it for a real emergency or illness. This is especially true in places that let you build balances to carry over year to year.
Whether or not you are abusing your leave has no bearing on who gets scheduled days off around holidays assuming you still have leave to take. My practice was to get employees to take turns, choose either Xmas or Thanksgiving, choose the day before or the day after, etc.
An employee not using their time wisely doesn't necessarily mean that he/she is abusing it.
You actually contradicted yourself. You said earlier that if you felt an employee was abusing leave, that you would make it extremely difficult on them when they requested a day off.
In my example, neither employee is guilty of abusing their time. Employee A, for whatever reason, mismanages her time at the beginning of the year, but she doesn't abuse it. Employee B uses her time more wisely, but remember, at the beginning of November, she's in the same position attendance wise as Employee A is.
I guess you could probably say it depends on what type of work environment it is too. Factories, for example, are generally better staffed than an office, and will usually have more people qualified to do more jobs. So if Employee A and B are factory workers, then more than likely the work doesn't suffer as much. If Employee A and B work in the office of the factory, then they may only deal with 1 area each and if those are different areas, then Employee A's area will be hurting when she's gone so much at the beginning of the year while Employee B's area will be hurting when she's gone in the middle months, but not for an extended period of time like when A was gone.
An employee not using their time wisely doesn't necessarily mean that he/she is abusing it.
You actually contradicted yourself. You said earlier that if you felt an employee was abusing leave, that you would make it extremely difficult on them when they requested a day off.
In my example, neither employee is guilty of abusing their time. Employee A, for whatever reason, mismanages her time at the beginning of the year, but she doesn't abuse it. Employee B uses her time more wisely, but remember, at the beginning of November, she's in the same position attendance wise as Employee A is.
I guess you could probably say it depends on what type of work environment it is too. Factories, for example, are generally better staffed than an office, and will usually have more people qualified to do more jobs. So if Employee A and B are factory workers, then more than likely the work doesn't suffer as much. If Employee A and B work in the office of the factory, then they may only deal with 1 area each and if those are different areas, then Employee A's area will be hurting when she's gone so much at the beginning of the year while Employee B's area will be hurting when she's gone in the middle months, but not for an extended period of time like when A was gone.
Look we are not going to agree.
I didn't contradict myself. We were discussing unscheduled leave being abused for illness/emergency when I said I would make it extremely difficult for them to keep calling in for that.
Why would I penalize an employee for scheduling leave in advance if that's what I'm trying to get them to do? I've given leave abusers holiday time off even when they didn't have leave by letting them take leave without pay or even advancing them leave if they were showing improvement. Shows good will and just makes my case stronger if they don't clean up their act.
I didn't contradict myself. We were discussing unscheduled leave being abused for illness/emergency when I said I would make it extremely difficult for them to keep calling in for that.
Why would I penalize an employee for scheduling leave in advance if that's what I'm trying to get them to do? I've given leave abusers holiday time off even when they didn't have leave by letting them take leave without pay or even advancing them leave if they were showing improvement. Shows good will and just makes my case stronger if they don't clean up their act.
The problem with advancing somebody leave that they don't have, and I'm sure you'll agree with this at least, is that if somebody else wants you to do it and you can't do it for some reason, then they want to go and say you're playing favorites. Since you say you've done it, I'm sure that you'd accommodate another employee the same way if you could, but there might be a reason why you absolutely couldn't do it right then.
I also believe that, while it may show good will on your part, doing that actually encourages the employee not to improve immediately. Maybe your experience is different, but I know for a fact that if you advanced leave to an employee that I work with that didn't have any time, they would still use their time the next year and expect the same thing from you. Now, if you're smart, and I do think you are smart so please don't ever think that I was doubting that, you would refuse to do it the next time. I do believe that the only way to truly get these people to stop abusing leave so much is to get denied time off for something they really want it for. If Sally's son is playing in the state championship game, but she has used all of her time and won't be able to make it because she can't get off work, then she'll more than likely remember that for next time. I'm not saying she'll change completely because of it, but you'd probably see her with a couple days left later in the year. Yes, she'll probably whine about not getting the day off that she wanted and she may even try to go to HR on you, but if she has no time, then she really has no complaint right?
You know from your years of management that people won't like all of your decisions and time off is a big one for employees. In my current job, there are only 2 people in my department and my boss is pretty cool. He also makes it easy. If we are both there and one of us puts in to leave early, we're automatically approved as long as we have the time to cover it, which isn't a problem with us. The one thing he does that I don't like is if one of us puts in for the next day off, he'll approach the other one and ask if we'll be there the next day. I don't feel he should be asking us that because we may go home, eat something, and get food poisoning, and have to call in the next day. Obviously, we won't know that though and even if we did, our company policy only allows him to deny us our time off if the other one is scheduled off, it doesn't matter if we call in or not. In almost 4 years of working for him, I've only known him to deny us going home early 1 time. He denied the other guy in my department when he put in to leave early. It seemed like a BS reason at first, but then we found out that the company had sent out an email telling supervisors to not allow same day requests to leave early. In other words, we could put in to take off a full day or leave early later in the week, but if we came in and put in a request to leave early that same day, it would be denied.
Last edited by mdlee3_46041; 10-16-2014 at 04:01 AM..
if you have an absence due to illness of 32 hours straight due to illness, then a doctor's excuse is required to code it as medical leave. Without a doctor's note, all hours of the absence gets coded against personal leave.
As far as what is viewed as acceptable leave usage, it isn't really clear. As long as you technically have the time available then you can use it. I just personally feel that there is a limit to what is truly acceptable.
For instance, I have accrued almost 1,800 hours of personal leave and medical leave. So, I am "entitled" to that amount of leave. Of course, it would be in poor taste for me to suddenly start burning massive amounts of it, as it would cause mayhem at our office.
Even though I supervise the employee in question, I actually can't see how much leave she has available; I can only track how much she has used. So, I don't truly know how much leave she has available. I can't imagine that she has many hours available though, as she seems to burn leave as fast as she earns it. If she was honest on her timesheet, then she would absolutely be burning it faster than she earns it. She has avoided being on leave without pay thus far. She does occasionally log in from home for an hour or two at night but I personally believe that she is doing this to earn some comp time to keep from going on leave without pay. I don't believe she is actually being productive and getting anything done with her time when she does this.
I somehow missed this post earlier. As you can see, the agency's policy is technically that as long as you have the time to cover it, you're good. Without anything in the policy that contradicts that, then the OP's personal feelings about her leave is irrelevant and I'll restate my belief from earlier that until she breaks the policy (calling in time that she doesn't have) then he shouldn't even be allowed to talk to her about her attendance.
If he wants to talk to her about her poor work performance then he can do that. If he can actually catch her cheating on her timesheets, then he definitely needs to do that. When it comes to just her attendance though, he shouldn't say a thing to her until such a time comes that she does break the rules. Since he can't see how much time she has to begin with, then he'll either have to wait to get an email from HR about her or somebody from HR will talk to her themselves.
In fact, since he can't see how much time she has to begin with, I don't think he should be able to see how much time she's used. It makes no sense to see what she's used without having access to what she started with. He can't talk to her about her attendance because he can't even say if it's bad or not.
Most companies expect you to schedule time off in advance other than for occasional emergencies or real illness. Not to take time off every week, just because the time is available to you or you cant get to work on time.
The employee is clearly abusing the benefit provided to her when she should be saving that time for a real emergency like needing to be out for weeks for an emergency surgery for example.
Sure she is abusing it compared to what I would do, but technically she is doing nothing wrong. Those kind of "PTO" systems allow the leave to be used for whatever, including sick or watching the kid. Those things come up out of the blue. Change the policy!
People like this end up getting weeded out if they are poor performers on top of it.
I can hear it now - "You's jes' pickin' on me, 'cause I's _________, an' I's gonna file a complaint wid de EEOC!"
I am not sure where you live, or whom you socialize or work with, but here in the south, in one of the most educated areas of the country, this is certainly not the normal pattern of speech for African A. or black people. Many I know and work with are far more educated than I am, and come from much better pedigrees. I am white, and not liberal, just in case you were going to use that to discount my post.
It's time for you to open yourself up to the real world, my friend. Just as with any other race, there is a segment of society who were not afforded the same opportunities as others, or their family background held them back. From this, you cannot judge an entire race. Just as I hope black people don't judge us based on your "Gone with Wind" type comments.
Most companies expect you to schedule time off in advance other than for occasional emergencies or real illness. Not to take time off every week, just because the time is available to you or you cant get to work on time.
The employee is clearly abusing the benefit provided to her when she should be saving that time for a real emergency like needing to be out for weeks for an emergency surgery for example.
Nonsense.
When companies decide to combine vacation and sick leave, this is what happens.
1. The policy is vague about usage issues, so what exactly is he trying to enforce?
2. It would appear, based on his comments here, that he has yet to have a face to face with HR and see where he stand as a supervisor. He needs to know if she has actually violated any policy. Perhaps he can also speak with her former supervisor(s) to see if there is anything to learn there.
3. It would also appear, based on his comments here, that he would like the employee to correct the issues he has outlined, but he doesn't want to ruffle any feathers or make anyone upset. He is going to need to get over that, and quickly.
4. I don't recall the OP ever mentioning what time the employee leaves. Is she staying late to make up?
OP's 1,800 hour unused leave overhang is also a FAR bigger problem--in many ways--than someone coming in 15 minutes late.
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