Attendance management means ensuring that employees are at work to perform the government’s mission. Obviously, the more time that employees are at work doing their job, the easier it will be to get the job done. However, this topic is more complicated than it may first seem, as it involves three interrelated areas: tours of duty (including alternate and compressed work schedules), alternate workplaces, and leave administration.
The bottom line for all three areas is that managers must ensure that the government is functioning smoothly and effectively while serving as an employer of choice by being sensitive to the needs of its employees. Trying to do both is a delicate balancing act that requires skill, strength, and an even hand. Let’s look at each individual area in more detail.
Tours of Duty
Tours of duty pertain to the work schedules of government employees. When scheduling such tours, first consideration should be given to the effective and efficient management of the organization’s functions, and second consideration should be given to fair treatment of the employees. Work schedules need to be established in a manner that best meets the organization’s actual work requirements. For example, some government organizations are traditionally open for 10 or less hours per day (a library, a school, a court, etc.), while others are open 24/7 (a hospital, the police, the military, etc.).
In most government organizations that are not on a 24/7 schedule, the normal workweek for full-time employees is 40 hours. The usual tour of duty within the 40-hour workweek is five 8-hour days, not counting lunch or breaks, Monday through Friday. For most employees, the working hours in each day of the normal workweek are the same.
Generally, an employee’s work schedule will remain fixed from week to week. However, on occasion, workload demands may require that a schedule be changed. Under these circumstances, employees should be given the opportunity to discuss how the changes to the work schedule will affect them. If the change is still administratively necessary, the employee should be given advance notice, where possible. Consider this example:
Our employees were allowed to come to work as early as 6:00 a.m., in order to avoid the southern California traffic. However, our phone hours of operation were from 7:30 a.m. until 4:00 p.m. It didn’t make sense to allow the people who answered the phones to come in so early, since they would be leaving by 2:30 p.m., which was 1½ hours before we closed for business. Accordingly, we notified the employees of the change, worked closely with our local union in order to address any extraordinary personal situations, and then implemented the change because it enabled us to provide better service to the public.
Special consideration should be extended to employees who have religious beliefs that prevent them from working on a particular day. If appropriate, consideration should be given to allowing the employee to exchange her duty assignment with another employee, or to finding another solution whereby everyone’s needs may be met.
Religious Considerations. Government organizations that have religious employees who observe the Sabbath may face discrimination complaints if they try and require these employees to work on Friday night and/or Saturday. On the one hand, if they can accommodate these employees within the framework of their tours of duty policy, without setting a precedent that can come back to haunt them, they can avoid the time, energy, and expense of litigation. On the other hand, if no other accommodations are possible, they should (1) ensure that all employees are aware of the policy; (2) be certain that everyone is being treated fairly and equitably under this policy; (3) document that they made a reasonable effort to try and accommodate the employee(s); and (4) stick to their guns.
From a management perspective, the easiest tours of duty to manage are those in which everyone comes to work at the same time and leaves at the same time. Under this approach, everyone’s starting time might be 8:00 a.m., with all tours of duty ending at 4:30 p.m. (assuming 30 minutes for lunch). This approach is very simple to manage because everyone comes and goes at the same time; everyone is available for meetings, training, and so on.
Unfortunately, as time goes by, one set tour of duty in government seems to be a thing of the past. First of all, government is competing with the private sector for skilled labor, and hours of duty are important to potential employees. Accordingly, it needs to find ways to make it an attractive employer, and offering a variety of tours of duty can be appealing to current and prospective employees. Moreover, the pressures on two-income families, the increase in single parents, worsening traffic, customer demands for increased business hours, and other factors make it imperative that government increase the flexibility of its tours of duty. As a result, many government organizations offer alternative work schedules to the traditional work schedule, which may be either a flexible work schedule and/or a compressed work schedule. Let’s look at each in more depth.
Flexible Work Schedule
There are many types of flexible work schedules. For the sake of simplicity, let’s go over just a few.
One approach is to have a flexible time band that contains a designated part of the schedule whereby employees may choose one daily arrival and departure time for the week, within limits consistent with their job responsibilities. This means that employees have the option of choosing one starting time for the week, between the hours of, let’s say, 6:00 and 9:00 a.m.
Another approach is a gliding flexi-tour, whereby employees may select a starting time each day, and may change that starting time daily as long as it is within the flexible band established by the supervisor. Under this concept, an employee can choose to start work at 6:00 a.m. on Mondays and Wednesdays, at 7:00 a.m. on Tuesdays and Thursday, and at 9:00 a.m. on Friday.
A third approach is a modified flexi-tour whereby the employee picks a starting time within the flexible band. This starting time determines the employee’s work schedule until changed. Under this type of schedule, the employee is given a predetermined amount of flexibility on either side of the arrival time the employee selects (usually 15 to 30 minutes). The time the employee arrives then becomes the starting time for that day, and the tour ends 8½ hours later.
There are many more options than the three I just described, but as you can see, the more that exist, the more difficult they become to manage. Let’s look at a number of examples where these schedules could be used and the challenges that they would pose.
Scheduling Group Meetings. Supervisor A works for his state’s Department of Labor and manages a team that is responsible for making decisions on workers’ compensation claims. Within that organization, they have both a flexible time band and a gliding flexi-tour. The supervisor manages a team of 15 people, some of whom arrive as early as 6:00 a.m., while others arrive between 7:00 and 9:00 a.m.
From one perspective, the schedules are not a problem, because most of the employees are responsible for processing paperwork, so the arrival time does not have a big impact on workload management or productivity. However, the wide variety of schedules means that training sessions can be conducted only after 9:00 a.m. and before 2:00 p.m., when all of the employees are present. Moreover, team meetings can be held only during the same period of time, or there will be gaps in communication. Lastly, the times when team members can confer on specific cases or other issues are also limited because of variances in attendance caused by the work schedules.
Scheduling Field Workers. Supervisor B manages a unit that is responsible for conducting background investigations. Most of the employees that she supervises spend the majority of their time in the field. They also work under a flexible time band and gliding flexi-tour. However, because the employees’ work in the field is individual by nature, the flexible schedules have virtually no impact on the unit or the supervisor’s ability to manage his team. Moreover, the flexible schedules allow the employees to plan their days around the locations of their investigations as well as around traffic schedules. In this situation, the schedules work well for everybody with little or no down side.
Compressed Work Schedules
A compressed work schedule simply means that a full-time employee who normally works 10 eight-hour days in a two-week pay period will be scheduled to work the same number of hours in the pay period, but for fewer days. Compressed schedules may take the form of four 10-hour days per week, or one day working eight hours and 8 days working nine hours in the pay period, resulting in the employee working only 9 days instead of 10 (this is sometimes called 4:5:9, meaning a person would work four days one week and five days the next). Compressed work schedules can take other forms as well, particularly for firefighters or nurses, who may work as little as three days per week. However, let’s look at how the first two types of schedules could play out.
1. Our organization allowed a number of our employees to work four 10-hour days. These employees were responsible for making complex decisions based on detailed written information. The employees liked the schedule because they had an extra day off each week and got to avoid the San Diego Freeway. Their supervisors were not as thrilled because the workplace was often far too empty for their taste. More importantly, over time, they began to notice that the output of the employees began to decline. While they still achieved their performance standards, the employees started to produce roughly the same amount of work in 10 hours that they used to produce within 8 hours.
I discussed this phenomenon with my counterparts in other offices and learned that they had had the same experience. Our conclusion was that this particular job required a high degree of concentration, and for most people, concentrating so hard for 10 hours per day was just too difficult.
2. We converted many of the employees who were on the four 10-hour days schedule to a 4:5:9 schedule. We found that this was more feasible because it was less tiring on the employees and did not adversely affect our productivity/performance. Although the employees would have preferred an extra day off, we were able to mathematically demonstrate why one program was better than the other one. As a result, people were able to accept our rationale and were pleased that we had at least retained the 4:5:9 schedules.
Considerations Regarding Flexible and Compressed Schedules
Flexible and compressed work schedules are complex issues that can be difficult to manage. They often sound better in theory than they work out in the real world. In deciding whether to establish and implement such schedules, you need to consider:
• The overall impact on your work
• The workload peaks that require the presence of all/most employees in the unit
• The effect of such schedules on productivity, efficiency, and overall performance
• The difficulty in managing, tracking, and coordinating the work of employees who are on a variety of schedules
• Additional costs generated by such schedules (rent, equipment, etc.)
• The employee coverage required during public hours of operation
• The impact on recruitment, retention, and morale
• The traffic patterns that affect the employees’ ability to arrive at work on time
• The manner in which training will need to be delivered in order to accommodate multiple work schedules
• The ability to conduct both team and larger group meetings
• How well the employees can work during periods when their supervisors are not present
• The effect that such schedules will have on your relationship with your employees and the local union(s)
Although these considerations are similar throughout the country, each situation is different and needs to be considered on its own merits.
Area Costs. Alternate and/or compressed schedules may make more sense in high-cost urban areas where employees have longer commutes and face far worse traffic than in lower-cost areas. In high-cost areas, government salaries are generally less competitive with the private sector, so offering alternate work schedules makes sense from a recruitment and retention perspective, and also should help to reduce tardiness. In lower-cost areas, where employees can live closer to the office because government salaries are more desirable, alternate/compressed schedules may still make sense, but they should be considered within the context of the local situation.
Many times, both type of work schedules arise out of negotiations with local and/or national unions, since such schedules are highly prized by employees. Management needs to be very careful when agreeing to such schedules because their impact may not be known until they’ve been in place for quite some time.
I strongly recommend that organizations that agree to these types of schedules build in the following caveats before implementing them:
1. They should first be implemented on a trial basis (e.g., three months, six months, one year, etc.).
2. The criteria for retention of these schedules should be established in advance (e.g., productivity, timeliness of service, customer satisfaction, etc.).
3. Employees should be made aware of the criteria and be kept apprised as to how the organization is doing relative to these criteria,
4. In the event that performance deteriorates, management will retain the right to terminate the schedule(s) that contributes to the decline in performance.
In this way, employees will have just as much stake in, and information regarding the retention of, the schedules, so in the event that the schedule(s) have to be eliminated, the employees will be able to see it coming and will have no real cause for complaint.
There was a case in one organization I was working for in which it was agreed to try an alternate work schedule. We identified in advance the criteria for retention of this schedule, which was that our employee output be equal to or better than it was prior to the trial. We decided that the trial would last for 90 days and that we would keep everyone posted regarding the results of the trial. At the end of the 90 days, we were able to document that productivity had declined, so we eliminated the alternate work schedule with virtually no employee resistance.
Our headquarters in Washington, D.C., has a difficult time recruiting and retaining people because of the cost of living in that area and the difficulty in commuting to work. Given the fact that many of the jobs there are analyst-type positions that do not require rigid schedules, they are able to offer alternate and compressed work schedules to many of their employees. Having the capability of offering flexible schedules makes it easier for them to recruit and retain good people. Moreover, these work schedules help morale and do not seem to have an adverse impact on the work.
Alternate Workplace
Alternate workplaces give employees the opportunity to work at locations other than the typical office setting. This can include working at home, working in an out-based office, or even working in mobile offices (e.g., helping the homeless, providing simple medical care, etc.). As with flexible schedules, alternate workplaces are designed to help the government work better while meeting the needs of its employees.
In many cases, flexible workplaces can improve services to our citizens by (1) moving the government closer to them; (2) improving productivity and efficiency by creating an environment in which employees can produce more work; (3) helping to recruit and retain employees by allowing them to work nearer to or actually in their homes; (4) and enhancing the quality of life of participating employees by allowing them to work in a less-stressful environment. It also may be used as a reasonable accommodation for handicapped employees.
As with flexible schedules, alternate workplaces are usually the subject of bargaining with local unions. Accordingly, prior to implementing such an approach, management needs to (1) work closely with the union(s); (2) be sure of its objectives going into such a program; and (3) be crystal clear regarding the criteria for success. In this way, if management concludes that an alternate workplace is not working, it will be in a good position to terminate such an arrangement.
That being said, once an alternate workplace is established, you want it to succeed. The best way to accomplish this is through careful planning and analysis. Prior to establishing an alternate workplace, you should consider the same factors that are recommended for flexible work schedules (what needs to be accomplished and when; the effect on productivity, efficiency, and overall performance; the difficulty in managing, tracking, and coordinating the work of employees who are away from the traditional office; additional costs generated by such a workplace, etc.). However, given the fact that alternate workplaces involve working at locations beyond the traditional worksite, there are several other factors that you should also consider, including:
• Whether the participating employee’s work duties can be effectively performed away from the work site
• If technology is needed and available to support the employee
• The manner in which the employee’s performance will be measured
• The procedures for dealing with unacceptable performance
• The way that training and communication will be handled
• The impact on the privacy of the government’s records1
• The possibility of someone getting injured at the alternate site
Assuming you want to establish one or more alternate workplaces, let’s examine the plusses and minuses of two of the most common types: work at home and out-based locations.
Work at Home
Working at home is very desirable for some employees, since it completely eliminates the time, expense, cost, and hassle of commuting. It is not for everybody because (1) many jobs are simply not transferable to the home (public contact positions, jobs that require employees to interact closely with others, positions that involve frequent meetings, etc.); (2) it can greatly reduce management’s flexibility, since fewer people are at the main worksite at any one time; and (3) many people miss the social interaction of working together with others. However, under the right circumstances, this can be an excellent option for both the organization and the employee, either on a permanent or a temporary basis.
One of the key positions in our organization required employees to make complex decisions regarding applicants’ entitlement to benefits. The position was solitary in nature, as the employee would simply sit at her desk, review written evidence, and make decisions all day long. The job involved relatively little interaction with other employees, except for periodic training sessions that were held several times a month. Performance was easy to measure, as employees were primarily appraised based on the number of cases they completed and their accuracy rate.
Given these conditions, we allowed people who occupied these positions to work at home up to four days per week. We required them to come to work the same day each week so they could (1) bring their finished work in and pick up new work; (2) attend training and team meetings; and (3) address any other issues that might develop (computer problems, performance issues, etc.). The employees liked these arrangements because they didn’t have to fight the traffic and they had more free time at their disposal. We also liked it because employees who worked at home were required to complete about 33 percent more cases per day than the employees who worked in the office (employees working at home did not have some of the same discrete tasks as the employees at the worksite, so we were able to raise their performance standards). In addition, we had happier and more energized employees.
While other employees had jobs that did not lend themselves to working at home, they understood which jobs fell into that category and which did not, and why. Moreover, they also knew that if they were selected for a position that was eligible for the work at home program, they too could take advantage of that opportunity.
For example, a long-term, exceptional employee transferred to our office. However, she had a serious disease and was finding it increasingly difficult to come to work. Since her job duties did not have to be completed at the worksite, we agreed to let her work at home for up to four days per week, just like the other employees referenced in the case just cited. However, as time went by, her condition worsened, and she was unable to come to work even for that one day.
Since she was a highly productive employee, we did not want to lose her services. Moreover, she wanted to stay with the government if possible. As a result, we had an employee who lived near her pick up and deliver her work once a week. In order to keep her in the loop, she dialed into training sessions and team meetings.
By taking this creative approach, we were able to retain her and leverage her talents. None of the other employees who had to come to work once a week complained, because they recognized that we were simply making a reasonable accommodation for a handicapped employee. In this situation, everybody won.
Out-based locations are basically satellites of the main worksite. They may involve a few people or may be larger in size. They are more complex to establish and administer than the work at home program, since these sites often (1) perform more discrete tasks than the people who work at home; (2) require additional infrastructure (mail, supervision, storage, etc.); and (3) are generally more expensive to operate since additional space translates into more rent.
However, under certain circumstances, the additional costs can be more than offset with increased performance, better customer service, savings, and more satisfied employees.
After the 1994 Northridge earthquake, for example, many of the federal government’s employees who worked north of the federal building in West Los Angeles, California, were unable to get to work in less than three hours. The earthquake had destroyed a section of the freeway that most of these employees normally took to work. In response, the United States General Services Administration opened up a Telecommuting Center in Valencia, California, for the employees who simply couldn’t get to the federal building within a reasonable period of time.
One particular group of employees worked for the United States Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Benefits Office. This group, which was less than 10 people, instantly became a team. They were so thrilled with their new arrangements that they vowed to outperform the other employees at the main worksite, with the goal of being able to remain at the Telecommuting Center for the foreseeable future. That’s exactly what they did, as their performance was extraordinary. As word of their success spread, many people came to visit this office to see a successful Telecommuting Center in action. Eventually, Vice President Gore presented it with a “Hammer Award” for reinventing government.
In another case, our Oakland office was having an extremely difficult time recruiting and retaining people because of the cost of living in the Bay Area. People couldn’t afford to live there on a government employee’s salary, given the cost of housing. Moreover, the office was paying an exorbitant amount of money for rent. Senior management knew that it couldn’t simply up and relocate the office given the fact that so many of the most experienced employees were entrenched in the area and would not relocate if the entire office moved to another part of the state. Accordingly, it decided to open up an out-based office in Sacramento, whose cost of living was much lower than Oakland’s.
Immediately, the organization found a large pool of talent in the area who wanted to work for the government. Quickly, it began to build that office up, and over time, it began to excel. Productivity rose and timeliness improved. While the Oakland office was now paying dual rents, it began transferring more and more resources to Sacramento. Eventually, it was able to give up space in the main office, which defrayed the costs of the new space in Sacramento. Within a few years, the Sacramento office became virtually a full-service office and is likely to continue to grow.
Then there’s the case at the Veterans Health Administration (VHA). For many years, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs had a reputation for delivering substandard health care. Veterans often went to private hospitals rather than receive free health care from the VA.
Part of the problem was that VHA was delivering health care services primarily through a large, bulky series of hospitals. VHA boldly transformed its organization by moving many of its employees out of these hospitals and into hundreds of community-based outpatient clinics (CBOCs). As a result, veterans had much greater access to health care, as they no longer had to drive great distances to visit a VA hospital. Moreover, the employees working in the CBOCs were generally more satisfied, as many of them wound up with shorter commutes. Today VHA is considered the worldwide leader in health care.2
Leave Administration
Although alternate/compressed work schedules and alternate workplaces are good strategies for improving your employees’ attendance, perhaps the single most important factor is still sound leave administration. This section will focus on strategies for improving the way you administer your leave program.
There are many types of leave in government, but for the sake of simplicity, I will focus on the three most common types of leave: (1) annual leave, also known as vacation time or personal days; (2) sick leave, which covers illness, doctors’ appointments, maternity, and so on; and (3) leave without pay (LWOP), which is authorized absence from work while in a nonpay status. Regardless of the type of leave that is involved, if you apply the following principles of leave administration, you will establish a strong foundation for your program.
Principles of Leave Administration
• The rules governing leave policy and administration should be communicated both orally and in writing to everyone. In addition, all employees should receive periodic training on this subject (e.g., employees should know the appropriate uses of each type of leave, whom they should contact to request leave, their phone numbers, when they should call, when a doctor’s note is required, etc.).
• Leave policies should be administered in a fair and equitable manner across the board (i.e., the same rules should apply to everybody).
• To the maximum extent possible, leave should be requested in advance. This will help optimize the overall attendance patterns.
• The largest periods of projected leave should be scheduled on an annual basis in order to avoid the forfeiture of such leave.
• Employees should be encouraged to save their leave so they are prepared for an emergency (catastrophic illness, care for a family member, etc.).
• Employees requesting leave should be treated humanely.
Let’s look at a few real-world examples of these principles.
Importance of Written Rules. An employee does not come to work, nor does he call in and request leave. When he returns to work the following day, his supervisor is quite upset because he did not hear from the employee and decides to charge him absent without official leave (AWOL) and take a disciplinary action. The employee responds that no one ever told him that he was required to call in and request leave for an absence of just one day. Moreover, he did not know his supervisor’s phone number.
While on its face, the employee’s rationale may seem somewhat silly, should (1) the employee decide to grieve the AWOL/disciplinary action, and (2) the supervisor be unable to document that the employee was aware of the leave policy and/or his phone number, the supervisor will be in an unnecessarily weak position to defend his action before a third party. The more effectively that the supervisor communicates the leave policy and all other appropriate information with the employees, the better the system will operate.
Treating Employees Consistently. An employee requests emergency leave for personal reasons. The supervisor denies the request based on workload considerations. The employee complains, indicating that the day before, the same supervisor approved emergency leave for a different employee in the same unit, which constitutes disparate treatment.
The supervisor is on firm ground to deny the leave if (1) the workload situation and/or priorities are different that day as compared to the day before; (2) there are fewer employees on duty that day than the day before; or (3) there is another legitimate business reason why the employee needs to be at work.
The key is that supervisors treat all employees in a consistent manner and are able to articulate their rationale when they deny leave. One note of caution: Do not interpret this principle too strictly. Very few leave disputes wind up before a third party, so don’t operate out of fear. Just make sure that you are asking yourself whether you are treating everyone fairly, and you should be in good shape.
Dealing with Frequent Absences. An employee always seems to have personal problems that require emergency leave. Every time he does not come to work as planned, it makes things that much more difficult to manage. The more the supervisor approves the unscheduled leave, the more he encourages the employee to continue to find excuses not to come to work.
This employee is different from the typical employee who has an occasional emergency; that’s to be expected. This type of employee needs to understand that frequent bouts of emergency leave hurt the organization.
The easiest way to handle this is for the supervisor to place the employee on notice that continued instances of emergency absences will not be tolerated and could lead to charges of AWOL and disciplinary and/or adverse action. He should then take appropriate action if the absences persist.
Mishandling Leave Schedules. Several employees come to you at the end of the calendar year and request the last two weeks off. Some of them simply want to enjoy the holidays, while others have suddenly realized that if they don’t use their excess vacation time, they will lose it.3 As a supervisor, you now face the unenviable choice of either allowing a bunch of people to take off from work, which will place a severe crimp in your capacity; or denying many of the requests, which will result in a group of unhappy employees. Either way you lose.
If you find yourself in this position, it is most likely a problem of your own making. You probably managed the employees’ attendance in a haphazard manner without developing an overall leave plan.
The better approach is to require all employees to request their vacation periods at the beginning of the year. In this way, you can plan the year out in a holistic manner, ensuring that you have appropriate coverage throughout every week of the year. You can identify scheduling conflicts early on, and address them accordingly. Moreover, you can ensure that everyone takes enough leave so that nobody will have to forfeit any vacation time. Finally, employees will get the message that they need to plan their leave and that you expect emergency leave to be kept to a minimum.
Encouraging Employees to Save Leave. One of the sadder situations that can occur is where an employee has a personal emergency, yet has no leave to tide her over during that time. This usually happens because the employee was not judicious in the use of her leave throughout her career, so when she really needed it, it simply wasn’t there. When this happens, the employee is truly in a bind, and can easily become a frustrated and embittered individual.
While saving leave is the responsibility of each employee, the supervisor also plays a role in this matter. Each supervisor should encourage employees to save their leave, because you never know when an emergency will occur. You may get sick, or you may be required to care for a family member. It is impossible to predict the future. However, you can prepare for the unknown, and saving leave is one of the single best ways to protect yourself.
As I began writing this book, for instance, I was hit with a series of health issues. I developed a herniated disk in my back that was so severe that I literally could not walk. Several weeks later, I underwent back surgery. Twelve days later, my wife was rushed to the hospital and underwent emergency surgery for a very serious chronic condition, and suddenly my physical problems went on the back burner (no pun intended). Shortly thereafter, my disk reherniated and I had to undergo a second back surgery. During this time and for the last 15 months of my government career, I was placed in the unexpected position of being both a caregiver and a care receiver. There was no way that I could go to work under these circumstances, but given the medical bills that I was suddenly facing, I also needed a steady income.
Fortunately, I had had the foresight to save my leave throughout my government career. As a result, when I was hit with so many medical and personal problems seemingly at once, I was able to cope. By saving enough sick leave and vacation time to cover me for those 15 months (although I did do some work for the government at home during that period, which reduced my leave usage), my income remained steady, which made my life a lot easier.
At the beginning of this section, I noted that there are three main types of leave: annual leave, sick leave, and leave without pay. Let’s look at those in more detail.
Annual Leave
Virtually every government organization grants annual leave to employees who achieve permanent status, understanding that employees need some personal time off in order to be effective for the long term. Annual leave is generally considered to be an employee right, although the right to take it is subject to supervisory approval.
Many organizations encourage their employees to take at least one two-week period of annual leave per year for the purpose of rest and relaxation. These relatively lengthy periods of leave are rarely a problem from a leave administration standpoint, as long as they are scheduled in advance and coordinated with the leave of other employees.
When employees request leave for the same periods of time and not every request can be granted, objective criteria should be used to resolve such disputes. The criterion usually seems to be either length of service with the government or length of service with the local organization, and is generally negotiated with the local union. However, I would encourage you to carefully think this issue through before simply using length of service as the sole criterion.
We used length of service within our organization to resolve conflicts in leave requests. Although this worked well for the more experienced employees, it greatly frustrated our newer employees, who represented the future of our organization. Every time newer employees wanted time off during a major holiday (Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, etc.), employees with greater tenure seemed to bump them. We wanted to give due deference to the people who had worked for us the longest, but we also wanted to give our newer employees the opportunity to take time off during at least some of the major holidays.
We finally decided to give the more experienced employees priority for their most desirable holiday and then give the newer employees priority for the second choice. In this way, we were sending two distinct but important messages: (1) experience with our organization was important to us and would be rewarded; and (2) all employees, even the newest ones, were important to our organization.
Leaves for extended absences are relatively easy to administer because they are usually requested in advance. However, requests for shorter periods of annual leave are tougher to handle because they often occur with little or no advance notice. The best way to handle short-term annual leave is to follow five points:
1. Leave policy and procedures are clear and understandable.
2. Employees recognize that every unplanned absence diminishes the ability of the organization to achieve its goals.
3. Emergency leave is expected to be kept to a minimum.
4. Management is perceived to be reasonable, willing to make a good-faith effort to grant an occasional request for emergency leave where appropriate.
5. Employees are aware that if their leave request is denied, they must report for work.
If these five key points are applied in a reliable and consistent fashion, and periodically reinforced at team meetings, requests for emergency leave should go rather smoothly.
Employees also need to be aware that leave administration is a two-way street and that they have a major role in its success. Far too often, I’ve heard employees complain that events beyond their control prevented them from coming to work, when in fact they had far more control than they believed. While clearly, some events do occur that cannot be anticipated (a sudden illness, a traffic accident, etc.), these events are generally few and far between and are not a part of the normal course of events. Let’s look at a few cases in point.
1. An employee suddenly notified us that he needed to take two weeks of annual leave during the Christmas holidays. He advised us that he had already booked his trip, and it was too late to cancel it. Since we had already approved all vacations for the Christmas holidays and since we were counting on this employee’s services during that period, we denied his request.
He became very angry and argued that it was unfair to force him to cancel his vacation plans, since he had already paid for it. In essence, he blamed us for his own actions. From our perspective, since he did not request annual leave prior to booking his vacation plans, he was at fault, and we simply could not accommodate him.
Despite our denial of his leave request, the employee took the vacation anyway. We charged him AWOL for the entire two-week period, and his employment quickly ended with our organization.
2. One of our employees had difficulty coming to work on time because of the traffic. She often sat in traffic for long periods of time and frequently came to work late. When we sat down with her to discuss her attendance, she indicated that she was already getting up early to try and beat the traffic and couldn’t possibly get up any earlier. Her position was clear: It was not her fault that the traffic was so bad, and she shouldn’t be held accountable for something that was beyond her control.
Obviously, we saw the situation a little differently. We were not responsible for the traffic, either. It was a fact of life, and everyone had to deal with it. She was a government employee who was expected to come to work on time, just like all the other employees in our organization. The time she woke up was not our concern; the time she arrived at work was.
We suggested that she consider a different tour of duty (her position did not lend itself to an alternate workplace arrangement), as we wanted to see her succeed. We were more than willing to work with her, but one thing was not negotiable: She had to come to work on time. We also advised her of the consequences of continued absences. As soon as she realized that we were serious and that it was her responsibility to come to work, she got the message and immediately started coming to work on time.
3. A long-time, solid employee started missing work. His reasons varied from family problems to car troubles to health issues. Although we were initially sympathetic and granted leave, we began to see a disturbing pattern. He often came to work disheveled, exhausted, and/or a bit disoriented. We suspected that his leave problems were symptomatic of a larger problem—drugs and/or alcohol. When we confronted the employee with our suspicions, he simply denied them.
Given the situation, the only thing we could do was to focus on his behavior. In other words, every time he requested emergency leave, we treated him the same way we would any other individual in a similar situation—we granted leave when appropriate and denied leave whenever his presence was required. Several times he did not come to work, so we charged him AWOL. This led to a number of personnel actions, until the employee realized that his job was in serious jeopardy. At that point, he confessed that he had a substance abuse problem, got some professional help, and eventually started coming to work on a regular basis.
Annual leave is relatively easy to administer as long as everyone knows the rules and understands that unplanned absences hurt the organization, you are fair and consistent, emergency leave is kept to a minimum, and you keep the focus on the work.
Sick Leave
Sick leave can be used for many purposes, including illness, appointments with a doctor and/or dentist, maternity, or caring for a sick family member under the Family Medical Leave Act. Unlike annual leave, which is an employee right subject to supervisory approval, in many cases, sick leave is a right that does not require approval. The general rule of thumb is that an employee is entitled to take sick leave when sick, although under certain circumstances, management may request to see documentation that the employee is indeed incapacitated for duty.
Since management’s rights with respect to sick leave are normally more restricted than they are with annual leave, this can be a more complicated area to oversee. However, if you follow the guidance contained in this section, you will find that it is not as complex as would first appear.
In my experience, most people request sick leave for legitimate purposes. As long as they know the rules and expectations with respect to notification and documentation, they almost always comply without difficulty.
Sick leave generally becomes a problem when dealing with the bottom 10 percent of the employees, who always seem to experience some sort of difficulty. These individuals frequently call in sick just as soon as they earn sick leave. On many occasions, they will call in sick for the period of time that the organization does not require a doctor’s note (usually up to three days). Moreover, they often schedule doctor’s appointments with little notice, which can cause disruption in the workflow. Lastly, these same individuals will occasionally request sick leave for extended periods of time, which will complicate matters even further.
Let’s look at several examples of this type of behavior.
Conditions on Sick Leave. An employee has only seven hours of sick leave left. He typically calls in sick several times a month, particularly on Mondays and Fridays. He should be counseled that his balance is extremely low and that he is unprepared in the event that either he or another family member develops a major illness.
His supervisor should also consider giving this employee a sick leave restriction letter. This type of letter is used by many government organizations and places the employee on notice that: (1) his attendance is unsatisfactory and needs to improve; (2) based on his pattern of attendance, he appears to be abusing his entitlement to sick leave; (3) effective immediately, every time he is requesting leave due to illness, he will have to provide a doctor’s note verifying that he was incapacitated—regardless of the length of the absence; and (4) in the event that he is unable to produce a satisfactory note, he may be charged AWOL, which could eventually lead to his removal. This type of letter ups the ante for people who appear to be misusing their sick leave and places management in a much stronger position to monitor the employee’s use of sick leave.
Last-Minute Doctor Appointments. An employee frequently advises his supervisor at the last moment that he has a doctor’s appointment and needs to take sick leave. This type of behavior places the supervisor in a bad position, since she is unable to plan for these last-minute absences. She should handle these requests by advising the employee that he needs to schedule medical appointments in advance, and to give her plenty of notice before she will approve leave. Unlike sick leave for illness, which is an employee right, sick leave for routine medical appointments is generally a right that is subject to management’s approval. The supervisor should make sure that the employee is aware of this and must comply with the guidelines or the leave will be denied.
Here’s a case in point: One of our employees was out of work for an extended period of time due to an injured wrist. While she was unable to perform all aspects of her job because it required some lifting (she was a nursing assistant), we had other tasks that only required light duty, which we felt she could perform. However, she kept providing us with doctor’s statements indicating that she was unable to come to work, which placed us in a difficult position.
We therefore gave her a written order requiring her to provide us with a doctor’s statement listing what work she could physically perform and what she could not. When we received this statement, it indicated that she could not do any lifting, typing, etc., but that she could do such light tasks as answering the phone and directing visitors.
Obviously, it was better for the government that she stay on the job performing light duty than it would be if she were home getting paid to do nothing. Accordingly, we ordered her to return to work for a light-duty assignment, and when she refused, we suspended her from duty for 30 days. The case eventually went to a third party, which sustained the suspension because we had sound medical documentation that the employee was able to return to work.
This case occurred early in my career. As I gained more experience, I began to question the value of suspending someone who did not come to work for a lengthy period of time. In essence, we were taking action against that person for not coming to work by forcing them to not come to work.
As time went by, I decided that (1) if the AWOL was bad enough to warrant a 30-day suspension, it probably justified a removal; and (2) if not, I would consider a 30-day paper suspension whereby the employee was suspended only on weekends. In this way, we established a pattern of progressive discipline that would easily justify a removal for one more offense, and we still had the services of the employee.
When dealing with sick leave issues, don’t fall into the trap of deciding whether an employee is truly sick. You are not a medical professional, so fighting that battle is almost always a losing proposition. Moreover, if you claim that the employee’s doctor’s statement is unacceptable, be aware that the employee will eventually be able to find a doctor who will provide you with an acceptable note.
The better approach is to focus on what the employee can and can’t do. In this way, you won’t get involved in medical debates, and any action you take will be based on the needs of the job and the employee’s physical ability to do the job. Moreover, you will be far less vulnerable in the event that an employee alleges that you did not make a reasonable accommodation for his handicap.
Leave Without Pay (LWOP)
This should be the easiest of the three main types of leave to administer, but supervisors often seem to be unclear about how to handle this issue. The thing to keep in mind is that in most government organizations, LWOP is not a right except in a few, rare instances (e.g., a veteran receiving treatment for a service-connected medical condition). LWOP is analogous to annual leave in that it requires the supervisor’s approval; however, unlike annual leave, the employee has no right to LWOP.
The best way to administer LWOP requests is through prevention. That is, if you constantly remind your employees that it is important to maintain high leave balances, they will hopefully think twice before wasting their leave on unimportant issues. That is another reason why, in Chapter 5, I recommended that you include employees’ leave balances on their performance report cards. By periodically seeing their leave balance in writing (other than on a pay stub), and by knowing that their leave usage is being scrutinized by management, the goal is that employees will be judicious in their use of leave, which is to everybody’s advantage.
On occasion, some very good employees will have low leave balances. Obviously, a pregnancy or a serious illness can quickly use up an enormous amount of leave. However, these individuals are simply using leave as it was intended to be used.
The bigger challenge involves requests for LWOP from people who do not manage their leave wisely. These are the same individuals that generally make the bulk of the requests for emergency annual and sick leave. They are the same people who seem to have a never-ending series of problems. They are also the same ones who frustrate the good employees, who wonder why management is so lenient with their requests for leave.
The best way to handle requests for LWOP from these employees is to put them on notice that their leave has been unacceptable and needs to improve. Earlier, in the section on sick leave, I discussed issuing a sick leave restriction letter. For those individuals who appear to be abusing their entitlement to sick leave and whose sick leave balances have been so low that they have begun requesting LWOP, I would issue them a similar letter and also advise them that (1) future requests for LWOP will be carefully scrutinized and will be denied, even if they are legitimately sick, should the workload require their attendance; and (2) if they are denied LWOP and charged AWOL, a personnel action may be taken against them, up to and including removal. You may be surprised to learn that you do not have to grant LWOP to a sick employee, but remember—unlike sick leave and annual leave, LWOP is not an employee right.
This approach places the employee on notice that continued absences will be carefully scrutinized and that the employee should think twice before continuing this pattern of attendance. While you do not have to issue this type of leave restriction letter in order to deny a request for LWOP, it is always better that the employee sees such a denial coming, particularly the employee who is absent so frequently.
Throughout my career, I have issued this type of restriction letter, and it has proven to be very effective. In most cases, employees have gotten the message that they need to come to work more often and on a more regular basis. Once employees recognize that they have no entitlement to LWOP and that management (1) is serious about dealing with their absences; (2) will not accept an unending series of excuses; and (3) is prepared to deny LWOP and charge them AWOL, which could potentially place their job in jeopardy, most of them come around and change their attendance patterns. If that happens, the leave restriction letter will eventually be withdrawn, usually after about six months.
On occasion, the employee does not get the message, or chooses to ignore it, at which point management needs to take action each time it denies the request for LWOP. These cases are relatively easy to handle and win if they go to a third party, because the restriction letter provides ample documentation of the employee’s poor attendance pattern and shows that the employee had been placed on notice that continued absences could lead to management action.
Multiple instances of AWOL following the issuance of a leave restriction letter simply require you to follow the terms of the restriction letter and your leave policy. If you take that approach, you will be in a good position to take action. However, isolated requests for LWOP involving extended absences can be a bit trickier, since they generally don’t involve the same obvious patterns of poor attendance. Let’s look at a few cases involving these types of requests for LWOP.
1. An employee called in one day and informed us that he needed LWOP for at least six months. When we asked him why, he indicated that he had been arrested for spousal abuse and expected to be in jail for the foreseeable future. He argued that he wanted to come to work but was being held in jail against his will, and therefore, his absence was beyond his control.
As you might expect, we denied his request. We needed someone to do his job, since he obviously was not going to be able to do it. The fact that he was arrested and being held in jail was his fault, as he made a personal decision to abuse his spouse. We proposed his removal, and he ultimately resigned.
2. A senior management employee fell down and sustained a significant number of injuries. This was only one of several personal problems for this employee, who generally came to work on time but always seemed to have personal issues that distracted her. Her absence left us in quite a bind because her counterpart had recently left and we had not yet replaced him.
While we approved her remaining leave and some LWOP, we could not afford to have her absent from the job for an indefinite period. After a couple of months, we denied her request for LWOP and required her to come to work. While she was in some pain, she was no longer in any danger, and we desperately needed her presence. This was a difficult decision for us to make, but this employee needed to learn that she had to take responsibility for her actions.
Whether you are considering requests for annual leave, sick leave, or LWOP, the same basic principles described earlier in this chapter should apply. Make sure that your employees are aware of the leave policies and procedures, and that you reliably and consistently follow these policies, procedures, and principles. If you do this, you will have a strong and effective leave administration program that will help ensure you have the best possible attendance.
Key Points to Remember
• Work schedules need to be established in a manner that best meets the organization’s needs.
• Each situation is different (schedule, workplace, etc.) and needs to be decided on its own merits.
• The leave policy should be frequently communicated to everyone and should be based on a clear set of principles.
• Administer your leave system in a reliable manner.