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Implement a corporate policy that specifies which family emergencies will be tolerated? Deducting from sick or vacation time will reframe the workers' perspective on what constitutes an emergency, too, if you aren't already doing that.
Making sick time or personal time available for such things just encourages them to frequently call out. "It's my time, I'm going to use it." mentality.
If your company has an attendance policy, you can terminate them for failure to be at work on a regular basis.You need the people who work to actually COME to work...and there are plenty of people out there looking for a job.
If people are calling out due to family emergencies it is probably true. Why in the U.S we are so strict. Other European countries are not that strict. If someone needs 2 hours it is porbably for a reason. People have children. Children can go to bed fine and then wake up with a fever.
Making sick time or personal time available for such things just encourages them to frequently call out. "It's my time, I'm going to use it." mentality.
Well it is their time. Legally speaking. It is legally part of their pay. An employer may implement rules about using it, but there is absolutely nothing wrong with an employer thinking of their time off as 'theirs'. Any more than it is wrong of them to think of their paycheck as 'theirs'. But the point is--personal time is a finite quantity. Most workers are loathe to waste their precious time off on trivial matters. Once they use up their time off, the obvious next step is to deduct their missing time from their pay.
Another thing OP might want to consider is that it isn't uncommon for people looking to leave to schedule interviews for first thing in the morning and then call in late to work to attend the interview. OP might be have a bunch of workers on their hands, looking to jump ship. So an alternative to laying down the law might be to consider why so many people are suddenly wanting to not be at work, and fix that.
You could try to make the world a perfect place where emergencies never happen. Short of that, I don't know what to tell you. If it's a single person who is repeatedly calling in, perhaps you could speak with that person in private to figure out if it would be better for him/her to take a leave or absence or something?
But $hit happens. No one is exempt from emergencies, and if it comes down to my time being spent with either a sick/dying family member or being at my job, my family member will win hands down. I'd wager that's how most people feel.
Like 2 hours before work starts. How should I go about this? The job is flexible but still.
You need to do a little research to find out what is going on.
• Are the same people having the emergencies repeatedly?
• Typically how long are the absences due to the emergencies: a few hours, a day, a few days?
• Do they explain the emergency -- or just take the time with the blanket explanation of "emergency"?
• Are the emergencies usually rooted in the same source -- e.g., a chronically ill relative, a chronically late caregiver, etc.?
• Are the emergencies usually on the same days of the week?
• Do the emergencies coincide with work responsibilities -- e.g., do they typically occur when a project deadline is due or when a report needs to be ready?
• How do the "emergency" people react when you follow up on how everything went during/after the emergency?
• Do the "emergencies" ever require any follow-up time off?
Look for a pattern -- and then put together a strategy for combating it. Everyone has emergencies on occasion; but some people seem to be "emergency magnets." It is these people who can make managing routine workflow as challenging as performing a high wire or trapeze act with continually changing partners?
If you have a written policy, review it -- and perhaps refine it.
If you are concerned that the pattern is growing or having a poor effect on morale of those not calling in -- you need to call the group together and address it.
• Explain the policy.
• Describe the concern about the increasing number of emergencies -- being respectful of those who had the emergencies, but giving some attention to those who had to make up the slack for the late-comers on very short notice.
• Let the group discuss the situation (but set a time limit for the discussion and don't let it deteriorate into the "blame game").
• Ask the group for some suggestions on how to proceed.
• After the session, come up with a strategy and reconvene the group a week or two later to revisit the issue and introduce any changes in the call-in policy.
We have the ability to work from home based on projects, contingencies, etc. However, our jobs are not set up to be work from home jobs. I.e. the environment we work is not really conducive to working from home because of the various meetings, interactions, and availability that is done face to face in our day to day work.
But since, we have the ability to work from home people began using it A LOT. If their head hurt, they would say they were going to work from home. If they woke up late, they were going to work from home. If they did a running race that weekend and were too sore, they were going to work from home. If they had to run an errand on the other side of town then they were just going to work from home.
Most others in our environment have NO ability to work from home so if any of the above applied they would need to take sick or vacation time in order to do whatever they needed to do. So for those who did not even have an option of working from home, there came a certain bitterness. Of course the folks on my team did not notice this, but I heard many complaints about it. I learned that if given the choice and you feel marginally not great then those who could work from home (and who were the biggest offenders of constantly working from home) would opt to do so every time.
So now, if you have to work from home you have to provide so many days notice. If you are sick enough to want to work from home, then you take sick leave... period. The point being if you are too sick to want to come in we dont need you "working", we need you resting to get better so we can work i.e. if you are ill you are not as productive and it makes no sense to have you "work from home" when you are not putting in the same type of work that you do in the office (as a caveat there are those who work even MORE at home due to not wanting to be perceived as only half working, but we had to make a policy that was for ALL not just for the few who really began to abuse the priviledge).
Diorgirl has some good ideas. I would talk to those who are doing this behavior one on one first. Try to see if maybe their schedules could better be handled with more flexibility or maybe it is truly just a string of very bad luck. I had one of those weeks recently where everything seemed to go wrong at once and caused me to be late, have to leave early, and take a sick day unexpectedly.
If people are calling out due to family emergencies it is probably true. Why in the U.S we are so strict. Other European countries are not that strict. If someone needs 2 hours it is porbably for a reason. People have children. Children can go to bed fine and then wake up with a fever.
yeah seriously, Americans are so gung-ho about work, sometimes things do come up and you need to be off for a limited time.
And most importantly, that employers just don't seem to get is that my immune system does not give a rats area how many sick days they allow...
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Short of that, I don't know what to tell you. If it's a single person who is repeatedly calling in, perhaps you could speak with that person in private to figure out if it would be better for him/her to take a leave or absence or something?
