Unscheduled Time Off

Rockie

We wrestle constantly with employees calling in at the last minute - sometimes with legitimate reasons or sometimes with suspicious reasons.(Nice day, day before or after a holiday, etc.). In the interest of trying to be fair, trying to take into account that some call ins are legitimate and also recognizing that we have to staff a medical facility, we are proposing a relatively innovative policy.

We will give employees 3 unscheduled call offs a year; on the 4th call off, 2 PTO days will be taken instead of one. This is per episode, not per day out. Say...you call in and are out 2 days with a virus, this would only count as 1 episode. I know this will not be popular with employees, but we have tried everything to appeal to employees' common sense and good work ethic as to the problems that are caused with skeletal staffing but to no avail. Our call off rate is not acceptable to good patient service.

What do you guys think? Good idea? Too harsh? Too lenient? Go back to the drawing board?

ritaanz

Do you have an attendance policy and a disciplinary procedure? Sounds to me that what happens at your company is too many employees take the same day off. I would suggest following an attendance/disciplinary procedure instead of being "creative". Even good people have bad days.

Gillian

[font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON 05-08-02 AT 10:10AM (CST)[/font][p]I don't think that you are in California, but if you are docking the extra PTO would violate state wage and hour regulations. I think that the only way to deal with this problem is to use the corrective action approach. Maybe the message that you are serious will get through if a few people lose their jobs. That is harch too, but if people know up front that this will happen, its not your fault.

Guess you aren't in Ca. Just saw the SC.

Rexxies

I agree w/the other person. Better to put in a formal attendance and corrective action policy identifying write-ups. Generally I've gone w/on 3rd or 4th incident they get verbal, next one after that, written, next one, suspension and next one is termed. I worked in healthcare way to long myself (don't now) and it's a mistake not to be formal re. attendance. Secondly, so you're taking away their PTO days--so what--that won't force them to stop calling off, promise. EE's are creative--they'll just figure out something else--coming in & saying they're sick & have to go....

Don't mean to sound cynical but attendance, unless you're in a very small, very professional environment (like consultants) is something people just take for granted and are not careful unless someone officially calls them to task.

Margaret Morford

Rockie,

One thing you might want to add to your attendance policy is the ability to address a pattern of attendace even if the employee has PTO time to cover it. This lets you address the person that calls in the day before or after a holiday or consistently misses Mondays or Fridays, etc. I would think that this type of language would also allow you to address the excessive call ins. That additional wording goes like this, "Occasionally an an employee will exhibit a pattern of absenteeism that must be corrected despite having sufficient accrued leave time available to cover absences (i.e.,consistently missing a specific day of the week, or calling in sick the day before or after scheduled vacation, excessive last minute call ins) Such cases should be brought to the attention of the Human Resources Department for review before issuing corrective action." Hope that helps!

Margaret Morford
theHRedge
615-371-8200
[email]mmorford@mleesmith.com[/email]
[url]http://www.thehredge.net[/url]

System

Rockie, I've agreed with you many times, but not on this one. I don't like rigid or complex rules, especially for attendance. It's amazing how hard some employees will work in order to manipulate an attendance policy. It's like watching a squirrel on one of those "squirrel-proof" bird feeders. The squirrel always wins.

I like Margaret Morford's idea of a catch-all policy that allows supervisors to address problems on a case-by-case basis. In a perfect world, this would put the burden on supervisors to either get tough with slackers or figure out how to get the work done in their absence.

James Sokolowski
Senior Editor
M. Lee Smith Publishers

Rockie

Well...James....you will be happy to know that you and I are still on the same page on this one too! I agree that this is probably not a good idea and I can see where it will end up punishing many people for the sins of a few. We have several clinical managers in our medical facility that have excessive call outs from their people and it does affect staffing...but, I am not sure that even docking "two for one" will cure this ill.

I am going to take this back to my administrative team (where this idea was born) and just ask that it be revisited. I am hesitant to add yet another "rule" when we are trying to go towards more teamwork and participative management.

Paul in Cannon Beach

I can feel your pain... However, in our case it is a management problem. Our staff follow the bad example of some of our managers.

So, to a degree we have created a very lax atmosphere regarding attendance. The work gets done but I wonder if it couldn't get done faster.

One manager was sick for awhile, then had a sick parent, then a vacation... she has basically been out for two months. Our executive director is too busy to really want to tackle this problem.

One question, is there a standard for tracking attendance that deals with what is and isn't a work day? If I check e-mails in my office for an hour then leave, is that a work day? I am thinking of salaried, exempt staff here. I understand they get paid for any week in which they do work but for the purpose of tracking vaction/sick leave, I am wondering about what is the usual standard?

[email]paulknoch@hotmail.com[/email]