medical

smills · September 2005

i have an employee who does not qualify for FMLA (not employed a year) but has been hospitalized 2 times in the past 2 months. each time he provided doctor's excuse for the absence. however, i just found out today that he is off now for an "undetermined" amount of time. even though he provides doctor's excuse for absence, i'm wondering what is a reasonable amount of absences before i have to bring him in and tell him his absenteeism is excessive and we must let him go. we are not a union organization and covering his shift is costing company overtime.
any help would be appreciated.

ps - first time i've posted, please forgive any boo-boos.

Gillian3 · September 2005

[font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON 09-08-05 AT 11:10AM (CST)[/font][br][br]You get to decide how much absenteeism warrants termination and reasonable will vary from employer to employer. Before you do that, though, think about the complications. Is this illness covered by ADA (assuming you have enough employees to be under this law)and,if so, would a leave of absense be a "reasonable accomodation". Can you provide a LOA and hire someone temporarily to do the work? How long has the employee worked for you? The longer the length of service the more unreasonable you may appear to be to the rest of your employees and within your community if you are in a small one. Maybe termination is the best thing to do but don't be hasty.

Ah, reread your post and see that the employee has been with you less than a year so that impacts my comments about length of service.

POPEYE · September 2005

Your situation is why every company should have a written attendance policy. Then, minus the ADA or FMLA factor, you have a definitive answer to attendance requirements.

lorrie · September 2005

I agree. You need a written attendance policy that spells out how many absences are too many. We use a point system that assigns points for each absence, and when an employee exceeds points they are terminated. If/when they qualify for FMLA, those absences receive no points.

HRLASS · September 2005

Welcome to the Forum!

Is the employee still in their introductory period? If he doesn't qualify for FMLA, he has no job protection. He can be terminated. Even the ADA does not require you to provide unlimited/indeterminate leave and hold a job. Good luck.

System · September 2005

If you don't have a written policy to follow, you can term on the basis of excessiveness. Determine what you think is excessive and if this employee has crossed that threshold. Evaluate your decision to make sure that no other seemingly discriminatory reasons that are illegal come into play. Is the employee in a protected class? Also make sure that what you have based your decision on will be applied evenly to all other employees. You have a bona fide business reason reason to term. It's costing your company overtime to cover his job and now a doctor is telling you he will be out for an undetermined length of time.

Good luck with this and welcome to the forum. If Pork were here, he'd welcome you too. He's hosting pig roasts and helping with the clean up after Katrina. Stick around and meet a lot of . . er, 'interesting' personalities.

CindyG · September 2005

Because this employee's leave requirement is "undetermined", this extended absence could pose a hardship to the company to hold the position open for this employee. What I've done for employees not qualifying for FMLA (or ADA)in similar situations is to let them know that because they cannot give me a date that they can return to work in the forseeable future, that I cannot hold their position open for them, but that they can re-apply with us once they obtain medical clearance to perform the job.

DMK · September 2005

Something else to consider is consistency. If this is the first incident of this kind for your organization, it will set the precedence for the future. If it is not, how were similar situations handled? If the employee does not qualify for FMLA and is not protected by ADA, we let them go and tell them they may reapply when they can perform the essential functions of the job. Only works if you have essential functions identified.

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