Changing hours for a pregnant employee

lnelson

We have a pregnant employee who will be going on leave in approx. 2 mths we have had a person training with her for 2 weeks so that the job she is doing is covered during her leave. The employee has not been cooperative in this effort. She is handing off all her work to this employee who was hired for another dept. When people walk by the pregnant employee station she is either e-mailing or on the internet. We are considering reducing her hours from 40hrs per week to 35 hrs. Also the employee who is training for the position while she is on maternity leave also works 35hrs a week currently. Can we do this? & When she returns to work can we still have her work 35hrs a week? She seems to think we are phasing her out but, we are just being proactive by training someone early she has had some complications with her pregnancy and may go earlier than thought.

Cindy Hanna

I am not to sure about cutting her hours but why don't you bring the pregnant employee in your office and explain to her what your intentions are. That could clear up a lot of resentment. I remeber being a little bit more emotional when I was pregnant.

bethann

a little emotional?? ha ha. how quickly you forget. I am currently preg... and well it's more than alittle! I agree that you need to talk to the ee. She is most likely reading into the situation something that is not there.. easily done when pregnant!

Don D

For legal reasons I would not be about the business of cutting hours and have it perceived that your basis for that is her pregnancy. It can easily be interpreted as pregnancy discrimination. Take the pregnancy out of the equation and deal with it as you would any incident of an employee not doing her/his job who clearly spends part of the day doing other things. Although I've not been in that physical condition, I don't think that being emotional during pregnancy would have anything to do with one's spending time on the internet during working hours.

Talk to her immediately in a frank discussion of what your intentions were in having her share part of her knowledge with the new ee. Make it very clear that she does not have an assistant.

lnelson

Prior to us having this person trained we discussed it with her stating the reason that it is a very complex job and that we wanted to avoid mistakes. She accepted this help but, when the person was understanding it alittle she disengaged herself from training her and then was condescending to that employee stating she had better not mess anything up and not to disturb her or desk and so on. Yet when we give her a job she makes it seem that she is overwhelmed with all the work.

System

I'm with Don D. You simply have an employee who's not doing her job (which includes training the new person). I wouldn't cut her hours unless she requests it.

James Sokolowski
HRhero.com

lnelson

>I'm with Don D. You simply have an employee who's not doing her job
>(which includes training the new person). I wouldn't cut her hours
>unless she requests it.
>
>James Sokolowski
>HRhero.com


Even though the other employees hours are at 35 now and she is doing more of the work hers and the pregnant employees.

Don D

A person who returns from FMLA is to be restored based on what HER job was when she left, not what somebody else's is down the hall. You can't give thought to someone else's 35 hour position when bringing her back. Unless the company has thought out a business plan to reduce all hours in similar jobs to 35 hours and the pregnant ee just so happens to occupy one of them.

Rockie

You should address the inappropriate internet and email useage the same as you would any non-pregnant,non temporarily disabled employee. You should also address her uncooperativeness and inappropriate behavior towards the person who will be filling in for her during her leave.

I agree that you should not reduce her hours. This will look like some form of retaliation because of her pregnancy and the fact that she is "making more work" for someone else.