Use of Sick Leave

HRfan

We have a policy that requires the HR office (me), to do a sick leave assessment on each employee at the time of their annual evaluation. This requires me to track all employee's sick leave usage at all times. If we have an employee that uses more than 40 hours of sick leave in any six month period, we do a Sick Leave Assessment form which requires the supervisor to question the employee about the absences (which has already been accomplished when the employee fills out the leave request). Nine times out of ten we take no action against the employee for using more than 40 hours. All employees earn 8 hours of sick leave each month. Our supervisors will usually take action prior to the evaluation period if there is excessive absences.

Please tell me what you think about this procedure . . . is it really necessary?

Thanks

Don D

I have a real problem with this procedure and would not have it in place, personally. It is not only unnecessary, it is dangerous. The main question I have is 'What will the supervisor do with the information following his questionning of the employee?" Will he retreat to his desk and use some sort of magical analysis to determine what he thinks is appropriate use of sick leave and what he thinks might be a sick occasion he wants to discipline for? Disciplining people for sickness or illness related absences is really sticky and can intrude on their FMLA rights as well as other rights afforded by your state, and in another case, pregnancy. You don't discipline people for illness and never should you refer to illness related absences in performance reviews. This whole procedure is so ripe for explosion that I would start the new year by aboloshing it altogether. Just my opinion. Maybe they'll move this question to the general HR area and you'll get more input. Happy New Year.

Whatever

Furthermore, I believe most of us have a policy in place in which the supervisor is not given a diagnosis (unless absolutely esssential, such as in determining how to make an accomodation).

marc

I echo Don D's discomfort with the process. Beyond that, even though it has been discussed in several different threads, I have a problem with the concept that an EE "earns" sick time and then faces possible absenteesim discipline policies if they use them.

Hatchetman

It sounds to a large extent that what you do is redundant to what the supervisor is doing.

I have no problem with the supervisor tracking attendance (maybe it can be done through a timekeeper or the use of a "master" timecard for the year) and being aware of any work issues that result from absences and discussing them with the empluyee as needed (e.g., perhaps the superivsor is noting that deadlines are being missed during a period that the employee is out frequently).

I don't think that merely because the employee has used X number of hours especially if its below what has been allocated (which is 96 for the year), that the employee has an "excess absence" problem. I have always felt that the allocation of paid time balances is a starting point but that the critical issue is the impact absences are having on the job, especially when the allocation has been exceeeded.

Of course, "protected absences", such as FMLA, would not fall into this.

So, for both an operational consideration (not having unnecessary redundant procedures and to concentrate on dealing with true "excessive" absence problems, I suggest that the process you follow be eliminated or signficantly changed.

Get the supervisors more trained in dealing with poor attendance...what to look for and how to respond.

Pork

HRfan: "It SUCKS"; our computer tracks the hours accumalated and used. When a supervisor/manager leader is interested he/she can call my assistant and get the specific information. Get rid of any HR administrative activity that ties you to the desk or office. To be most effective HR has got to be out where our customers (the employees) are located. I was once tied down with these burdeon activitites that no one cared whether I provided the information or not. By the way, welcome to the forum, I hope you eill come back again sometime!

PORK