Doctor appointtmt detail

Shadowfax

Guidance please. Long term hourly employee with no obvious medical problems (she broke her ankle last summer but is healed and rehabbed) is now taking off anywhere to an hour to four hours, several times a week for Dr appointments. She has plenty of pto available and there is no FMLA. This employee is a member of a 6 person clerical team that is very busy. This employee has a history of avoiding work at any opportunity and shoving it off on others, a history which has not been dealt with very well by mgmt. Now her boss wants to ask what the hell is going on with these Dr appointments almost every day and especially the 4 hour ones - he is suspicious she is just using up her sick time in preparation to leave us. What can we really ask? How much should we know? Any wise advise? Thanks.

Whirlwind

I'm at a state agency and by law we have separate sick leave and vacation rather than pto. The law says that we must require medical documentation for a use of sick leave beyond three consecutive days, but it also permits us to require medical documentation for sick leave of any length at our discretion (e.g., if we believe that it is possibly being used inappropriately). I don't know how well this fits in with a pto policy. If you do not advise employees in advance that they are subject to being asked for medical documentation to justify absences, you probably can't pull it off with her in this instance. If your pto policy doesn't put any restrictions on how employees use the time off, your hands may be tied for now. At this rate, surely she will run out of pto reasonably soon?

HRinGA

how much notice does she give when leaving for these appointments? I would ask for a doctor's note proving she was there due to the excessive absences. When you say "no FMLA" is it because she's not eligible or your company? Anyone who needs to see a doctor that frequently has serious health issues going on. Unless of course, she lying just to get out of working.

Shadowfax

I should not have used the term pto - we have sick/vacation - but I have fallen into the shorthand of pto. The co. is not liable to FMLA at this time. She gives us plenty of notice by filling out her request for time off at least a week in advance. Unfortunately, we have never required documentation, probably because it has never been a problem. I suspect that even with slips proving she kept an appointment, the general opinion will be she is faking it. I'm saying I don't think we are entitled to know specifics, certainly not entitled to ask, and I'm not sure we even really want to know (ie the job is driving her nutz!).

HRinGA

hmmm. In the past, when I've had an employee out excessively for sick leave, I started asking for a doctor's excuse. I told her that we hired her b/c we needed her here to work, and right now she's not. I then went into the FMLA spill. but that doesn't apply to you. I guess I'm not really helping here. If you don't want to know and aren't going to question the appointments, then I don't know what to tell you. I still think you could have the conversation that her absences are too frequent and excessive. She's not protected under FMLA so the attendance needs to improve. There has to be some sort of communication about how long she will be gone and how long this is going to last.

Shadowfax

You are helping: I'm beginning to see where I am conflicted. How does one logically/fairly administer an absence policy in the face of available sick time?

HRinGA

well, at least she is requesting the leave in advance. I guess you could tackle the part about her being gone from 1 hr to 4 hrs. Maybe she could schedule her appts when your least busy? ie first thing in the morning/late in the day. Most doctors will accept a 4pm appt. Even though the sick time is available, people will abuse it and that's what we suspect is happening. I would also still ask for a dr note. At least then you would know she was there and forking out a co-pay.

Balloonman1

Bring her in sit her down, and say while you may have sick time built up, you recent usage is placing a significant burden on the department. While you may need off for appointments, from this point forward you need to schedule them towards the end of the day, say after 3:30 pm and provide an appointment slip when you put in the requests. Failure to do this will result in a denial of request and no sick time will be paid.
If she complains say she can decide to work with you......or work somewhere else. If it continues fire her.

My $0.02 worth.....
The Balloonman

pork1

This reads as a performance issue and not a sick issue. I just love to confront an abusive attendance issues person with the facts that production has not occurred based on the shared value of the paper which request "absent excuse". The company needs to draw the line and put down some consistent rules and procedures. No FMLA then termination for those who can not be at work and producing is the call of the day from the labor pool!

PORK

Whirlwind

>>How does one logically/fairly
>administer an absence policy in the face of
>available sick time?

Shadow, this is one of the all-time, classic HR questions. If we ever figure this one out, next we'll go to work on curing the common cold and then world peace! :-?

Here are some thoughts, in no particular order, I've developed over the years.

1. Once you've decided to have sick leave, you must -- to a certain extent -- accept the fact that some people are going to abuse it, no matter what controls you put in place. You can expend more time and energy trying to manage the abuse than you will ever be able to save by keeping people from using it inappropriately. Some people will disagree with me on this, but after doing this for 22 years, I'm learning to cut my losses on futile tasks.

2. That said, you still have to put some controls in place. You need a policy that has the following elements: First, require documentation for a certain length/amount of absence with the proviso that you can require documentation for an absence of any length if the leave use is suspect. Second, the policy also needs to state that if a person overuses leave, even with a medical excuse, that person is subject to termination. Where I work, we define "overuse" as running out of all applicable paid leave and going into LWOP. Third, #2 is null and void if the absence is legally protected (FMLA, ADA). This drives supervisors nuts, but I tell them to not even bug me about an "attendance problem" until FMLA is exhausted (I know your current situation is not FMLA; I'm trying to be more general here).

3. Once such a policy is in place, yes, by requiring documentation, you will learn about things (such as that the person has an ADA-qualifying condition) that you wished you never knew. But these facts will probably come to light at some point anyway, like when you start talking about termination.

I welcome further discussion on this topic, because I'll bet I've spent more time working with supervisors on attendance issues than any other performance or conduct problem.

njjel

Our policy states that if an ee is out sick more than 5 times in a 6 month period they are then required to bring in a note from their physician stating that they were seen by him/her each time they are absent thereafter.

Also, as already suggested, I would bring her in and tell her she has been excessively absent in recent weeks and this is unacceptable and her attendance must improve. She may divulge details at that meeting that would shed light on the subject. I also would advise her that she needs to schedule her appointments later in the day. You said she gives you a week's notice. This tells me that there is flexibility there. Good luck.

fnb south

What would your advise be if you had an employee who had only been with you for 10 weeks and out of that time they have missed 4 weeks because they say they are sick and have doctor's appointments? She is not eligible for FMLA yet and has not even completed her 90 day evaluation period. She has brought in doctor's excuses but they are not signed by the Physician but by the assistant nurse practicitioner and it only includes the days she is excused for. The excuses even look like they have been photocopied and cut out. Can we call to confirm the excuses are ligit? After her appointments she says she is coming in but then she will call and say she doesn't feel well or the medicine is making her sick. Her perfomance is not good because she isn't here enough to learn the job and doesn't seem to put the effort in to learn the job.

J9JC

It is my experience that if you see a person's true colors right away, you better cut and run. EVERY time I have a person who has been out sick repeatedly in the first 90 days, I end up firing them later and regretting not going with my gut in the first 90 days. In my opinion, if you cannot even make yourself look good during a probation period, you are certainly not going to once you have become a "regular" employee. I have had good employees become sick in the first 90 days, but the repeated absences your person is having tells me they are not well enough to work full time, or working the system.

marc

There is probably not a hard and fast answer, but the elements are included in several posts. I think Whirlwind summed it up pretty well. I would add a head nod to NJJel's suggestion.

We do a bit of a combination - require Drs. notes confirming appts and also clearing the EE to return to work (just in case some other issues are arising). These notes are required at the discretion of the supervisor and often are suggested by HR as a tool to verify that at least the EE is seeing a medical provider.

The next best tool we have is not defining, but mentioning "Excessive Absence." We are considering the method suggested by Whirlwind, but that can obviously put you in a box when someone has built up a ton of time. So we can currently tell an EE that it does not matter if he/she has time available on the books - we need them at their desk, doing their job, and if they cannot do that, we will find someone who can. Then we start the disciplinary process as NJJel suggests and let things proceed from there.

Shadowfax

Thanks for all of the comments. I have done as several suggested and told her her recent absences are creating problems, asked for her assistance in working with us by scheduling apptmts later in the day. I will also look more closely at our policy and adopt some of the suggestions of this wise and generous group. Thanks again to all.

PS Anyone know where ol Don is? Havn't seen his posts lately.

marc

He left this forum. There were some explanatory threads about it for a while, but perhaps they have all been removed by now.

I won't go into a great amount of detail, but there was quite a bit of controversy - I sent you a private message which will give you some more information.

Crout

Counsel her as suggested above, and also tell her that ANY absence must be accompanied by a doctor's note with the date and times clearly noted. Then call the doctor's office directly to verify that your EE is a patient and was seen on those dates. If the doc balks at verifying it over the phone, tell them you'll fax the note over to them for verification. We've caught a few EE's who submitted fake notes and successfully fired every one....and our company is unionized.