Unexcused Absence

Pain

I have a supervisor who would like to fire an employee who has a doctor’s note for every absence. The supervisor has counseled him on FMLA and has asked the employee to have his doctor fill out FMLA form in order for his absence to be considered excused.

My question is do your company consider a doctor’s note an excused absence? Our current absentee policy states “an employee failure to report to work and to remain at work as scheduled” constitutes an unexcused absence. It does not contain any verbiage regarding a doctor’s note. Should it?

I have also talked with this employee about FMLA and protecting himself by taking the extra step to have his doctor fill out the FMLA paperwork, he continues to bring in just a doctor’s note. Should we go ahead and fire him?

Rockie

It seems to me that this employee has some type of relationship with his physician where he or she can get a doctor's note for any reason just by picking up the phone and calling him. Otherwise, it would be rare to be able to get a doctor's appointment at a moment's notice. I would be suspicious of this. I worked for a medical facility once where the administrator's secretary was signing a doctor's name to notices for her friends to be excused from work.
Needless to say, this person was invited to leave the facility.
You certainly gave the employee good advice in applying for FMLA. I hope that you have properly documented this,i.e. maybe by memo to the employee.

Another thing to consider is: what type of absences are these? Do they even fall under the guidelines of FMLA? Are they part of a chronic illness? If they are just sporadic episodes of minor illnesses, FMLA would not even apply.

I think you have an attendance problem on your hands and someone who knows how to work the system. Depending on the severity of the absences (and I would assume there are many), I would just make sure I have covered myself on the FMLA issue. I would still consider the absences chronic, even if the person has a doctor's excuse.

You can do this two ways - (1) after examining your documentation and you feel comfortable with it, go ahead and terminate or (2) spell out in a memo in no uncertain terms that you consider the absences excessive and they do not fall under FMLA (if that is the case). Then you could go on to say "the continuance of this pattern may lead to further disciplinary action, up to and including termination of employment".

ritaanz

Rockie:
Your post reminded me of one that happened to me. I had an employee with excessive absences. Our union contract stated that a doctor's note made the absence excused and could not be counted towards a poor attendance record. The notes always came from a clinic affiliated with the local hospital. After receiving the 12th note in 30 days, I pulled out all the notes from the file to review them. The hand writing appeared to be the same but had different doctors names. I called the clinic to inquire if the doctors worked there. Surprise, surprise, not one doctor worked there. What had occurred was this employee stole the pad from the clinic's desk and wrote her own notes. Ya neva know.

Janet

If your policy doesn't give credit for a doctor's note, sounds to me like these are all unexcused absences. I'd definitely pursue the FMLA avenue (issue a "preliminary designation"); if no information is returned within the 15-day time frame, you've cleared that hurdle. The key here is, don't back down! Once they know the company is a pushover, they'll take all they can get (and try new stuff all the time)!