When An Employer Says Enough

[Joubert[$]]

I'll be interested to hear your perspective on the following situations:

1) An employee is being treated for depression and wants to leave work early twice a week for treatment. Additionally, the employee has told you that they will be looking for another job in a new city when "things" are better.

2) An employee has an incurable disease, but one which they will die from in the long run. The employee needs to leave 2-3 times each month for treatment and is always out of sick and vacation leave.

3) An employee going through a public (in the office, at least) divorce is late almost every day. There are suspicions that the employee has been binge drinking, but nothing conclusive. While at work, the employee is making lots (and I do mean lots) of personal phone calls.

4) An employee who is a single parent constantly has child-related interruptions -- everything from phone calls to days off. "I'm raising these kids by myself," is the refrain this employee often uses.

5) An employee is everyone's friend, and I do mean everyone's. Think The Love Boat's Julie McCoy. This employee is friendly with the vending machine guy, for crying out loud. Unfortunately, this employee's productivity is a good half of what it should be.

Okay, these are all real-life scenarios. I've dealt with some, will with others. Assume for purposes of this discussion that all employees have been appropriately counseled, but have not yet made changes to the inappropriate behavior.

What do you choose to do with them if you're the boss? (Actually, I'm not the boss in most of these cases, but am trying to mentor the boss).

[amykhar]

I find it hard to find fault with employee #2. If they were a good employee before they got sick, I would do my best to show compassion. I just wouldn't give them performance based raises.

#1 is not quite the same. If it weren't for stating that they were looking for a new job, I would consider it the same as #2. If they were a good worker before the depression hit, I would try to ride it out with them. The new job thing puts a kink in things though.

#3 needs serious counseling, and if all else fails, following through with the normal reprimand-termination sequence.

#4 I can't judge this one without knowing the person. It depends on why she is a single parent, how many kids, how old, and what her work is like when she's there.

#5 If the employee has never been as productive as she should be, I would think she's not right for the job. It would be kinder to let her go earlier rather than later.

I was a number 1 to some extent at my last job. One thing that still irks me was that my boss told me how wonderful I was before the depression hit, and then I was like a different person. For me, part of the depression was caused by the job; so it ended up being better that I was let go. However, I can't help but think that if I were a boss who had an employee who suddenly went into a crisis, that I would do my best to help them get through it or ride it out.

Of course, you have to realize that my dream of winning the lottery involves buying a business and running it so that my employees feel that they are living in Sweden. I have no dreams of being the next Bill Gates, but I often to fantasize about creating the "perfect" company for employees.

Amy

[phoenixx]

Originally posted by joubert
[b]I'll be interested to hear your perspective on the following situations:

1) An employee is being treated for depression and wants to leave work early twice a week for treatment. Additionally, the employee has told you that they will be looking for another job in a new city when "things" are better.

Allow them to leave twice a week early for their treatments, provided they agree in writing to either arrive early on those two days to get in a full day or take a prorated pay cut equivalent to the lost time.

2) An employee has an incurable disease, but one which they will die from in the long run. The employee needs to leave 2-3 times each month for treatment and is always out of sick and vacation leave.

Of course they can take short leave of absences any time with proper notification, without pay and without fear of losing their job.

3) An employee going through a public (in the office, at least) divorce is late almost every day. There are suspicions that the employee has been binge drinking, but nothing conclusive. While at work, the employee is making lots (and I do mean lots) of personal phone calls.

First, let the employee know that you are aware of his personal problems and are sympathetic, but that the office is an innapproriate theater for this pain. Then, tell him that you are also aware of his excessive personal phone calls, and that you are instituting a reimbursement system for him in which you will bill him weekly for his calls (I'd say take it out of his check, but an employer can not deduct reimbursements from pay checks by law). You will tell him that this reprimand is going in his persoanl file, and that failure to reimburse for personal calls is grounds for dismissal.

4) An employee who is a single parent constantly has child-related interruptions -- everything from phone calls to days off. "I'm raising these kids by myself," is the refrain this employee often uses.

This is a harder situation than the divorce case, because the welfare of a child is involved. However, it is resonable for an employer to expect the parent to arrange responsible care for their child. I would meet with this employee and explain to them that as a company, you are not unempathetic to their needs as a single parent, but that you are within your rights to expect their parenting to have less of a negative impact on work. Find out more about how the child's school is structured and how the daycare is structured. Ask if the school and daycare can be limited to certain times of day to call the parent at work, and limited to the number of times they can call in a week. Ask the parent if being able to bring the child to work when school is out, for instance, would help them. If the parent is reacting favorably to the fact that you are business minded but not unaware of thier issues, then offer them the chance to research to costs and legalities involved in starting a company day care. Ask the employee to find out who else would utilize such a feature. Get them involved in their own solution while still making it clear that the end goal is not charity but a smoother business environment and better workplace.

5) An employee is everyone's friend, and I do mean everyone's. Think The Love Boat's Julie McCoy. This employee is friendly with the vending machine guy, for crying out loud. Unfortunately, this employee's productivity is a good half of what it should be.

Find out if there is an opening in sales or marketing where the employee's personality may become an asset and offer to train her in that position. If you have done that and she still is not productive after a reasonable amount of time, then you will have to let her go.

Leslie

[mnehr]

#1: I would make sure the employee in question has ‘read and understood’ a copy of the employee attendance policy. This employee, like all others under me, will have the opportunity to use their flextime, trade shifts, use vacation time, or personal time for their appointments. If they, however, abuse the attendance policy, then they risk ‘having the world opened up to them..’
(Be sure to always deal with the here and now and avoid speculation that the party may find a new job. This may unfairly make your judgement bias against the employee. )

#2: See #1. Also be sure to take into account the FMLA if the employee is out for an extended period for medical issues.

#3: See #1 regarding attendance. Regarding personal calls, make sure they have ‘read and understood’ the company guidelines regarding personal phone calls. Give them a written notice of intent that their actions must change or disciplinary action could take place.

#4: See #1

#5: (assuming productivity issues are not related to attendance issues) Give the employee a set of performance standards they must meet in order to keep their job. I would work on setting up a mentoring program or a set standard of small goals that will help them grow to the desired performance level w/ out feeling overwhelmed.

If, however, productivity issues are related to attendance issues, then See #1..

It is important that in this lawsuit happy environment that one stick to ‘the book’ regarding items like attendance. If one person is disciplined for an attendance issue, while another is given an out because of various circumstances, then you risk a hefty lawsuit.

I believe my flextime, vacation time, personal time, and shift-trading policy is quite flexible and should guarantee that people who have legitimate medical issues still have the opportunity to keep their job.

[pluckyduck]

Matthew wrote:

It is important that in this lawsuit happy environment that one stick to ‘the book’ regarding items like attendance. If one person is disciplined for an attendance issue, while another is given an out because of various circumstances, then you risk a hefty lawsuit.

There's the rub. That is true. There are ways to play with the lines, and I do, but no matter anyone's personal circumstances, you must have the same reasonable expectations of everyone. This is often impossible for an employee like the single parent in example #4 to understand. If single parent takes 10 personal phone calls a day related to child issues, Wild Single Young Gal sitting next to her can't be reprimanded for taking 10 personal phone calls from 10 different guys a day either.

You certainly can treat people differently, but work performance (either recent past or present) is the only defense you have for treating people differently.

We have no personal phone call policy, and parenting is precisely one of the reasons. I've got single parents, I've got young mothers in double working parent families. I'm a working parent. You get phone calls about your kids and from your kids. I don't care if Employee X gets 10 phone calls a day from or about the kids or from or about the boyfriends...but I do care when anything becomes a distraction and individual performance suffers or it brings down the group as a whole. Everybody has slack to manage their personal issues that come up; you don't get more slack just because you are a parent.

I had a single mother one time whom my heart just went out to. Her personal life was a mess...she was in the middle of a break up with a long time live in SO, she had three growing children, one with a serious learning problem. I cared...but her mess leaked all over the department. She spent from 3:00 on managing her household by phone, yelling at the kids, "Put your brother on the phone! I told you to blah blah!" I was fortunate enough to not have to fire her, she left for North Carolina in the middle of the night one night ..but I certainly didn't rehire her when she called to get her job back six months later. Had things progressed though, I would have fired her . It is not fair to everybody else to be expected to carry somebody's workload for an extended period of time.

Okay, I'm going out of order here. Let's go back.

#1 The depression person.

No problem "leaving early" twice a week if you can just make a flexible schedule for the person so he/she still works the full amount of hours. If a flexible schedule is impossible, it is not unreasonable to ask that treatment be outside normal work hours, even going so far as to help (if allowed) to come up with treatment resources. It is possible to be completely supportive and helpful and still maintain a fair deal for everybody.

#2 Incurable disease person.

This one is hard. This kind of stuff falls right through most company's safety nets and gives me a headache just to contemplate it.

If the person has a long history of superior performance, it's easier. You find whatever ways you can to cut as much slack as possible, and stand on the body of contribution should another employee question perceived favors.

If the person doesn't have such a long history, perhaps a reduced work schedule (with reduced pay) is in order? I don't want to think about it and hope I never have to deal with it. I'd lose a lot of sleep over that one.

#3 Divorcing person

Ho hum. I've got problems too, bud. Get your act together or get on out the door.

#4 I did already.

#5 Everybody's friend.

Yeah, I was that person once. Hey, the vending machine liked me! The lack of perspective inside Everybody's Friend's brain is amazing....I honestly believed, when I was young, that I was the most valuable employee in the company just because I was so friendly to everybody.

Everybody's friend is missing the part where he is getting paid by the company to bring in money for the company. Work isn't social hour, it's work. The reason they call it work is because it's w-o-r-k. Knock, knock, hello.

If the guy is worth saving (meaning, the feeling is that he has the potential to be worth money to the company), laying things out for him in idiot terms might help.

"You produce X. I need you to produce Y for you to keep your job. The only way you will be able to produce Y is if you keep to yourself for an extended period of time and don't spend hours a day socializing. If you don't produce Y, I will have to fire you."

Everybody's friend doesn't believe he could ever get fired because everybody likes him. He needs to hear the words.


Andrea
glad to be solving somebody else's problems

[pluckyduck]

Originally posted by amykhar



Of course, you have to realize that my dream of winning the lottery involves buying a business and running it so that my employees feel that they are living in Sweden. I have no dreams of being the next Bill Gates, but I often to fantasize about creating the "perfect" company for employees.

Amy

Be careful what you wish for!!!!

Trust me on this one.

Having built my stuff up from the ground, I had exactly that opportunity. I had exactly the same fantasy too.

Oy.

Oy. Oy.

It is amazing the difference between a vision and reality.

Oy.

Andrea
who is wondering if she said "oy" yet

[frazzledspice]

If an employee has a disability (or incurable illness) I assume that it is probably covered under the ADA and that reasonable accommodations must be made because of it.

Many companies have long and short term disability insurance, and I would think that someone with a chronic incurable illness might qualify for benefits.

Most times they are 2/3 pay, and if the employee contributes at all the benefits are tax free.

Letting a truly disabled person use the long-term disability is probably not hurting him economically and perhaps enhancing his quality of life.

Here in Arkansas there is no requirement that employers even contribute to a statewide ST disability insurance fund. I was really shocked and disappointed to learn this.

In the two rural states I've lived in (Arkansas and South Dakota) I was astonished to see that benefits most employees in more enlightened places take for granted are unheard of, primarily in smaller businesses.

I know that employers want pro-business laws, but the main way they can insure lack of government interference is by treating their employees well on their own.

Delta Airlines kept unions out by treating its employees better than the competition's union employees (and I think Wal-Mart does that too.)

[quasar]

Originally posted by frazzledspice
Most times they are 2/3 pay, and if the employee contributes at all the benefits are tax free.

This is dependent on the policy. I've seen 50%, 60%, and 2/3. It's only tax free if you pay taxes on the premiums.

Short term disability is less common than long term, and chronically ill or dying does not necessarily qualify as disabled. If the person is merely missing a few hours each week but otherwise doing his job chances are he is capable and probably won't qualify for disability payments.

Janice

[pluckyduck]

Originally posted by quasar


This is dependent on the policy. I've seen 50%, 60%, and 2/3. It's only tax free if you pay taxes on the premiums.

Short term disability is less common than long term, and chronically ill or dying does not necessarily qualify as disabled. If the person is merely missing a few hours each week but otherwise doing his job chances are he is capable and probably won't qualify for disability payments.

Janice

Yep. That's why that particular scenerio upset me so much. Really want to get upset? Take that scenerio and make it a terminally ill child of an employee...nothing to cover that, other than the family leave act...which of course, provides leave, but no pay.

In either situation, if an employee exhausts sick and vacation time and still needs quite a bit more time off throughout the year, I'd think offering a reduced hour schedule would be the most compassionate thing to do.

As always, having a savings plan at work and encouraging all people to participate is one of the best safety nets you can offer employees. There are circumstances that can arise in anyone's life which make performing a full time job for full time pay impossible. (It can happen to anybody.) A full time salary is payment for a full time job....if employees can't do the job, the company can't fill the gap with salary for an extended period of time.

Andrea

[murasaki]

I guess I have a different perspective because it's nearly impossible to fire a federal (civilian) employee and career-ending to fire a soldier, though it does happen.

1) Civilian - covered by sick leave; if they run out of sick leave and vacation time (which they can use also), then there's the leave donation program. Otherwise, they can take the time off without pay. Military - can go to any and all doctor's appointments and do not have to "make up" the time ever and cannot be penalized for medical appointments, problems.

2) Same answer as 1.

3) Civilian - Can make them take leave for missed time or go without pay. Personal calls are not usually an issue if they're local; long distance they have to pay for. They can also be counseled about performance. Military - Missing first formation is a big deal and usually results in a counseling statements. Enough counseling statements can result in non-judicial punishment which incurs extra duty, restriction to the barracks and/or loss of up to a month's pay. Can counsel for performance about the calls if they're interfering with work; must repay long distance calls.

4) Civilian - Must take leave. Military - not much I can do. The day care facilities on military posts are notoriously short on hours--they close at 4:30 and the soldiers have to go get their kids. Counseling might be in order to tell the soldier to get control of his/her family situation. However, I've seen this misused to tell single parents to send their kids to grandma. Single parents have a lot of leeway with me, but most of the single-parent soldiers I've had work for me were exemplary.

5) Civilian - Counsel them for performance. I've been able to fire a couple of civilians in my time for poor performance but it takes forever and has very clear guidelines about what actions a supervisor can and cannot take. Military - Counseling again. Soldiers can be fired but a supervisor has to have a pretty good case and usually the soldier just gets assigned somewhere else.

--naomi

[conradd]

Good questions, George! I don't have time to consider all of them right now, but I wanted to address your second situation:

Originally posted by joubert
2) An employee has an incurable disease, but one which they will die from in the long run. The employee needs to leave 2-3 times each month for treatment and is always out of sick and vacation leave.

Several of the larger employers that I've worked for have had a sick leave donation policy in place. Employees with accumulated sick leave can donate a certain percentage to other employees who have catastrophic illnesses that are sick leave eligible. It's a safety net that has worked very well in the few cases that I've seen it used.

Deb

[amykhar]

This is why I want to have nothing to do with management in the real world. I hate the thought that rules would keep me from helping people that I care about or doing what I feel is right in my heart.

Amy

[Joubert[$]]

Interesting points all. I do want to mention with regard to sick leave donation banks that they tend to work best in small or micro companies. Once your population crosses 200 or so, there are bound to be multiple incidents.

Counsel has advised us against setting up this type of program because it can't be consistently applied. We have no less than 3 people who have incurable, lifelong diseases. Who gets what? And are they allowed to also have vacation time?

Picture the issue: Employee goes on vacation even though they have this awful issue. Everyone's entitled to a vacation, right? They use 10 days of leave. Months later, a relapse or other medical issue puts them in the hospital for a month. Everyone wants to donate to help out their friend. Good deal. But now, there's another employee who is also ill. They didn't take vacation. They spend their two weeks on medical related issue and argue to HR that they should get a higher percentage because they didn't use their time on vacation.

Lawsuits have been filed for less.

Now pretend you're running a company with 500 employees. How do you decide who gets what -- knowing with almost certainty that your decision will face at least one legal challenge.

Yes, you can add layers of benefits coordinators, HR types, lawyers, etc. to help administer the issue. Now the company's SG&A costs are going up, and the margin erodes or prices increase. Both create bad economic outcomes. So don't look at these issues in a vacuum. If you put HR people in place to over-administer a complex program like this, you will either return less profit (causing the company to not be able to expand or do other things) or you will cause consumer prices to rise.

[frazzledspice]

One of the largest employers, if not the largest, in the country has a sick leave bank.

The Federal Government.

My brother, who has MS, has been a beneficiary.

True, he's been there 25 years. He has 5 weeks vacation. He has 2 1/2 weeks sick leave.

What he really needs is a reduced schedule.

They have allowed him to work from an office a few miles from his home Mondays and Fridays so that his commute (in the NYC metro area) is less burdensome.

When friends donated their unused leaves specifically to his leave account because they loved and respected him, he was really touched. He has six extra weeks. He is hoping to make it seven more years to age 55 retirement....he thinks maybe this six week cushion will help.

God bless the generous people who give from their hearts. And yes, they designated those unused days directly to him.

[Joubert[$]]

That's a touching story, and I am truly glad that your brother has found a situation to work for him.

Unfortunately hundreds of families depend on the decisions we make, and we have been told by more than one attorney that there is "significant legal risk" associated with this program and that it must be carefully administered with a series of checks and balances.

Our estimates are that such a program will cost upwards of $100,000 to develop. We are unwilling to reduce the organization's income or raise price to cover that amount and are thus unable to offer such a benefit.

As I said before, this can't be looked at in a vacuum. The federal government is not bound by the same rules as non-government employers, nor are they required to break even or, God forbid, post profits.

[murasaki]

The federal government is not bound by the same rules as non-government employers, nor are they required to break even or, God forbid, post profits.

I am quite happy with those profits, thanks very much! An undergraduate degree, a graduate degree, good salary, trips abroad, hundreds of thousands in medical care, and now, I even get stock options (Thrift Savings Plan).



--naomi