compassion fatigue

Nicki

Thanks sammyroser. She's not my first employee! I had the same person in the same role for 10 years, who only left because she moved to another part of the country with her husband. Sickness, dependents leave, 2 maternity leaves and compassionate leave all worked fine with her, because they were requested sufficiently rarely to raise any suspicion that they were not genuine.

I will draft a policy and have an informal meeting with her to go through it in the first instance, not a formal disciplinary. Hopefully she will then get the message that if she keeps taking the pee, that a disciplinary will be the next step.

Poet - on paper she should be perfect due to her qualifications and how she was recruited, and in all honesty I think she does like the job, but just isn't as my old boss used to say "one of life's hard workers" so succumbs to the lure of a duvet day too often and isn't aware how noticeable this is to an employer. She will get a shock when she finishes her degree and starts working in a commercial setting

poet123

Ah, well as you say, she is in for a very rude awakening!!

You seem to be doing everything correctly, it is a shame she cannot reciprocate with reliability. Good luck.

ktothema

This may sound strange but in the first instance I'd try not to go to hard on her, whilst bringing it up. I took a lot of sick leave from my previous job, and when they tried to pull me up for disciplinary I was shocked at quite how much. I was extremely embarrassed. Turned out I hadn't taken that much off, but still more that I'd actually thought. Although mine was stress related due to my manager's actions, and they never got to take me to disciplinary.

A quiet "do you realise just quite how much time you've had off" chat combined with explaining the need for reliability may actually shock her out of it. Or it might not, but then you know you can throw the book at her.

Savvy_Sue

You don't have to pay for compassionate leave.

When we had residential staff at work, their contract said that they had to ring at least an hour before their shift started if they were unwell - sounds like your policy needs to reflect your need to have more notice.

It could be worth you looking at the ACAS website, they will have examples of what should be in the policies you need.

Do you also have any ongoing relationship with the agency where you got her? Do they have any advice or examples of policies for employers?

Nicki

Thanks for all the help. I just wanted to let you know that in the interests of preserving the employee's confidentiality I've amended my posts to remove anything which might identify her however remote the chance of that is, but have left the outline of the problem intact so that anyone reading it with a similar problem can see what the advice relates to. Thank you again for the advice and particularly the link which has all been very helpful in clarifying the best approach.

blossomhill_2

Hi Nicki
I have employer experience and add a few thoughts below - HTH (hope still of use although it crossed with your thanks!)

Nicki wrote: »

The employee's attendance record is not good. Since she started nearly two years ago, she has fairly regularly called in odd days with minor sicknesses which I personally would not have taken time off for

Does she need to tell you what the sickness is as such? I would have thought that reporting in sick would be enough; knowing what the sickness is is causing you to make value judgements about them

Since January this year, she has had 2 weeks and 1 day off sick (eventually producing a medical certificate but begrudgingly)

This sounds a lot, did you do a return to work interview to ensure that there wasn't anything related to the job that was adding to the situation, such as work-related stress?
If there is a pattern to the days there may be an underlying cause (ie hangovers or sprained ankles on Mondays) that you could tackle, as if for instance she were binge drinking or playing football at weekends this would be self-inflicted and within her control

3 days off compassionate leave for the death of a grandparent who lives overseas.

This sounds reasonable, given travelling time, and is not likely to happen more than 4 times

Yesterday she phoned to say that she was not coming in to work as agreed because she had learned another overseas relative even more distant had died.

It would be unusual to grant paid compassionate leave for anyone more distant than a grandparent, perhaps you should have suggested she take her annual leave for this unforseen event

To be honest, I am suffering compassion fatigue. I need someone reliable who will turn up when she is expected, so that if I have made plans I can stick to them

of course

I feel that I am fulfilling my obligations as an employer by paying her properly in accordance with the law, at a generous rate, with decent holiday entitlements, but that because she is working in the home and I am often around, she is not giving me the respect of treating this as a proper job.

A chat about how she has been through a lot lately but that you hope this is the start of a period of stability for both her and you would go a long way here. You could also discuss healthy habits such as regular meals to keep her immune system in good order so she is more able to shrug of minor illnesses, if any of her ailments were immunity-related

How do others handle persistant absenteeism, particularly if there is a "reason" for the employee not turning up if this is causing a problem, but the employee has accrued employment rights?

I would expect her to use her annual leave, giving the required notice beforehand

I doubt you could bring in a sickness policy if you haven't had one to date. Likewise a compassionate leave policy. Did you have written TORS etc when you employed her?

The two paras above don't contradict each other - you dont really need to know what the minor ailments are but you do need her to join up the dots and see that if they are self-inflicted or due to her not taking care of herself you won't expect to be paying for them much longer, and it may affect any reference you give her for her future aims

sammyroser

A company/employer can bring in a new policy unless

The requirement would mandate that an employee do something illegal,
The requirement is otherwise discriminatory in any manner against an employee or employees because of race, religion, gender, age, disability or other protected status, or
The requirement has a disparate impact on someone because of his or her protected status. In other words, if the new mandate that your boss put into place was going to adversely affect people of a certain gender or religion, then this would be an example of prohibited or illegal discrimination.

And as long as it is introduced correctly. The OP cannot use it for example on past absences, nor could she not tell her employee about the new policy. So in a way the employer will have to give the employee a clean slate but will now be able to action against unacceptable absences.

If the OP has an informal chat explaining the new policy and what she expects then one of three things will most likely happen.

1. The employee will improve (from the impression I'm getting this is unlikely)
2. The employee will quit
3. The employee will not improve and will eventually lose her job.

Companies bring in new policies/amend policies all the time. There is nothing wrong with this and usually comes from past experiences so negative instances will not happen again.

Nicki

I don't ask for reasons when she phones in sick but these are usually volunteered. Usually something along the lines of "I have a sore throat so will be off" or "I have a bad cold", etc.

The 2 weeks sickness with a medical certificate was genuine, but added to another dozen odd days off over the course of the last working year pushes her sickness record into the massively unreasonable from an employers point of view.

She did not travel anywhere for the dead grandparent. The 3 days were to grieve at home. Her parents travelled to the country for the funeral but she didn't and never had any intention of doing so.

She has used all of her annual leave already. She actually requested to take it all in one block of 5 weeks at the beginning of the holiday year for a long trip abroad. That has no doubt added to the problem as she now has none left for occasionals. She still gets Bank Holidays and also paid days off if we are away as a family, which not including BHs has added up to another 3 weeks this year, so she has actually had 8 weeks paid holiday plus bank holidays but only 5 of those weeks at a time of her choosing.

I think it is more professional and appropriate to give her a revised set of policies than to lecture her on her diet and lifestyle to be honest which surely is none of my business. Businesses introduce new policies, handbooks, etc all the time - why do you think a written codification of something which should be obvious would be legally problematic?

Savvy_Sue

blossomhill wrote: »

This sounds reasonable, given travelling time, and is not likely to happen more than 4 times

I got the impression that the employee wasn't actually going to this funeral, although I could be wrong, and certainly wasn't going to the other relative's funeral.

blossomhill wrote: »

I doubt you could bring in a sickness policy if you haven't had one to date. Likewise a compassionate leave policy. Did you have written TORS etc when you employed her?

Course you can: you can change any policy or any part of someone's terms of employment at any time. You're supposed to consult, and if the employee doesn't wish to accept the change then they don't have to, but they're then looking for other employment, generally.

And the OP said that they no longer pay for 'waiting days', so they have changed their policy already.

If none of this was written down initially, then I'd approach it along the lines of "I think we need to formalise what happens when you're unwell, so that we're both clear about it." Then produce the document - for example where I work we get so much on full pay and so much on half pay when we're off sick, it says who we need to speak to, and for our residential staff it said what they needed to do BEFORE returning to work - ie someone who's been off for a week had to confirm at least a day in advance that they were fit and would be returning, rather than just turning up.

blossomhill wrote: »

The two paras above don't contradict each other - you dont really need to know what the minor ailments are but you do need her to join up the dots and see that if they are self-inflicted or due to her not taking care of herself you won't expect to be paying for them much longer, and it may affect any reference you give her for her future aims

it could well be worth while making her aware that many employers do ask how much sick leave has been taken when taking up references.

Notmyrealname

How long has she been employed by you? If it is coming up to 11 months and 3 weeks you need to make a decision quickly because once she gets to 12 months then it is far harder to sack her. Before 12 months, including notice period, you can dismiss her without reason.

Personally I'd get shut.