My manager won't leave me alone on annual leave

gm0

There is a strong flavour in this forum about "knowing your rights".  And because bad and exploitative employers continue to exist that's no bad thing at all - as baseline guidance for the inexperienced to stand their ground on an informed basis when needed.

But it is only one and an incomplete perspective.  The attempted rebuttal of "it's more complex than that" common sense arguments are amusing.  Legally it may not be - though that itself is arguable (as all law and policy always is - being how lawyering makes its £££).

 

In life it is. 

Once you are in a grievance "lawyering" up about interpretation of HR dusty documents the broader game is already lost IF your relationship to work (customers, organisation, fellow team members and management) is MORE than a transactional x hours compliant attendance for y pay. 

I totally accept this is of itself a big "IF".  

Many jobs are not more than that.  And some are. It pays to be *very* clear on which it is for *you* - in this *job* and organisation.  Compliance for pay. Stepping stone. Paying your dues skills and experience building. A career ?

A good manager running something of operational criticality will attempt to have more than one person who is capable in any given area/skillset/system/site - whatever it is.  And to manage their holiday requests to suit cover for operations.  If they don't manage that level of cross training - the team may be too small and overstretched - exploitative (costbase for profit) or perhaps that's what the market price and revenue can support at UK pay. Resilient cross training is limited by that. And so some risk is carried.  And people leave.  And new people joining need time. And stuff happens.  Stuff is like that.  Flexibility is how that gets addressed past a certain point of reasonable planning.

Case example.  Let's imagine Jim and Sally are cross trained.   Jim is on approved leave and Sally is now in a car crash and off unexpectedly. There is a period of higher risk.  Darren the apprentice isn't up to speed like Jim and Sally yet.  Something bad happens when Darren is on his own.  So the manager was doing broadly the right thing scheduling Jim and Sally's leave and training Darren but not *enough* to cope with all possible "events".  Now there is a problem.  Does Darren call Jim.  How does Jim respond?

If Jim is on holiday and he helps Darren for a few minutes on a phone message and we get through the operational crisis (whatever it is).  Then I (as the hypothetical operations director) feel favourably towards Jim for helping the team while on leave  in a difficult situation and showing flexibility and commitment to the organisation and our customers and their outcomes. Our collective reputation, sales, revenues, job security.  When I read afterwards about the incident handling and root cause analysis blow by blow.  Alternatively if he is an !!!!!! about it at the time and again afterwards to his team manager - even if he is legally entitled to do that - I am likely feel somewhat less favourably towards him when I read that longer incident report about Darren's struggles.  It is what it is.  Jim was less flexible. As is allowed. He didn't help at a time of difficulty. Bad stuff happened.  It was worse than it needed to be.  The manager acted reasonably but failed to create a structure that coped with the series of events leading to this eventuality - operating within the cost parameters given them.  They have had a performance dip in their area (having been unlucky x3 - sally/incident/jim unhelpful) but it still happened. Expectation of Jim's potential future contribution to the organisation has also shifted - negatively - albeit to a more realistic position of where he actually is rather than where we would wish it to be.

As Jim and Sally's ultimate boss I have influence and signoff over career progression for the managers and teams, pay and rations. I can always find something legitimately different about the performance of two different people.  Without it being "this" incident or thing. To choose in aggregate to advance someone and not someone else.  So in the entirely fair (to my overall goals for the organisation) performance managment process one will just find that Jim was a bit less performant next cycle than Sarah (from unrelated team) who was the one who got the promotion.  No outstanding performance bonus for Jim. Also not quite done enough to advance on payscale.  None of it linked to this incident. Entirely by the book.  Legal. To policy. Documented. Life.  He just slipped down a real or notional performance ladder. Not discrimination on a protected characteristic.  Not constructive dismissal. Jim is in good standing as an employee and tolerated and without disciplinary process. His relationship to work was tested and *clarified* and the expectations around his future likely performance have shifted to reflect that genuine position.
He may come to discover he is on something of a plateau vs others showing a bit more va va voom in their career interest until he leaves of his own volition or redundancy re-org comes around and skills trump attitude or vice versa.

Bigger corporates like flexibility and a modicum of free extra effort.  And they often get it in return for an element of "career development".  Is that exploitation.  Absolutely it is.  And part of the actual living deal rather than the employment t&c

So despite what some forum points of view suggest - potential Jims should *strategically consider* how flexible they choose to be
Choice and consequence - it is absolutely fine to choose to be more or less flexible.

All that is required that you then happily bear the consequences of the choices *you* make in the context you are in

TELLIT01

The case example given is one of a genuine emergency.  That is not what the OP is experiencing.  I was in a management or supervisory role for over 30 years of my working life and would never have acted as this manager seems to have done.

Jude57

It's not always management who don't respect annual leave. I was always the first manager in the office, so was always the point of contact for anyone ringing in sick. I often received calls (on my personal mobile, we didn't have company ones) outside office hours. Once at 0230 from someone who had been 'rushed to hospital' - she hadn't, but was a total drama llama. Another staff member called me at 0730 to say she was ill and wouldn't be coming in to work. I reminded her that I was 400 miles away on holiday and she said 'well, you're the manager so you can ring the office to tell them I won't be in'. Needless to say, I put her straight and made it clear to all staff when I got back that no-one was to be contacted while on leave as, since we weren't dealing with life or death situations in our profession, nothing could be that urgent.

B0bbyEwing

Grumpy_chap said:

The Director ripped up his notes in front of me and grumbled a gritted "thank you"

Something I have found to be a common feature among managers throughout my time experiencing various ones - they're all very good at jumping in with both feet.

Problem is, you run the risk of looking like a right idiot.

Which is why I always prefer to do the listening part first, then if the telling is required - I gave it. I always went down the "you did XYZ, can you talk to me about that" route rather than "right, you've been seen doing XYZ, you're in for it now pal".

Dakta

I've often ended up working (or at least doing bits and bats)  on holidays, obviously if you jet off theres not a lot you can do but if something springs up I won't not help out on principle if there is soemthing I can assist with, does help if management are appreciative, mind. I'm actually a bit the other way, you have to peel me away from work (I see you're on leave tomorrow, I'll be cross if you have your phone on!) . Happened today, I knew we'd had a bad week with a lot of people off and so even though I was doing my own thing I caught an email which might have spelled trouble, when i got a free moment I jumped on and checked it out, false alarm, log off, time for a brew but might not have been.

That said, what's described in the OP is taking things a bit too far the other way. Whilst i'm totally for people on holiday showing a bit of flex when the crap hits the fan, doing stuff on leave is a favour/good working ethics and a bit of teamliness -  not an obligation. 

So because you didn't respond on annual leave he's deleted you from the team chat. Nice. This for me shouts of the problem of blurred lines when using personal social media for business because I presume he did it on the basis that he thought you'd use social media in your free time and thus were selectively not respondinh to him. Which you can argue is totally fine if on leave but clearly not in their book. Everyones boundaries are different but you need to (re?)establish yours.

To answer your question, I'm not sure how normal it is, but it's not healthy and as a work-addict even in my free time yes it's a bit hypocritical - but it's not right you need to recharge if you want to.

I wouldn't be happy using a personal social media account for someone else's business purpose either, but that's a separate argument. 

Ath_Wat

TELLIT01 said:

Ath_Wat said:

TELLIT01 said:

lisyloo said:

TELLIT01 said:

There should be no need to contact staff who are on leave, even for 'urgent' matters.  It's the responsibility of management to ensure that there is adequate cover.  It is not acceptable to expect staff to provide that cover outside their contracted hours.

When the OP returns to work and has their 'chat', suggest to the manager that the provide them with a company mobile which they can leave at work unless specifically on-call.

Life isn't always that simple.
I work on complicated stuff and not everyone knows everything.
Fortunately my team are very supportive and we all help each other out.
It works both ways with flexibility and we don't take the mick. We'd only call someone on leave if we really had to and usually they have said we can.
we would never call anyone unnecessarily though.
In return I get flexibility and help back.

Sorry lissyloo, but it really should be that simple.  I only retired 6 years ago and for most of my working life I worked in IT support.  We had an on-call rota and I can only recall one occasion when I called anybody not on that rota.  Even then it was a call to a member of staff who had offered to handle a job if the need arose.  I repeat my previous comment that it is up to management to ensure they have cover in place for all roles, other than absolute emergencies.  Continually calling a staff member who is on leave, and that fact is known to the manager, simply indicates that the manager is incapable of doing their own job.

Are you talking about a situation where a member of staff is the only person who actually knows something, though?

Of course you don't call people asking them stuff other people can do.  But if you have to call them to ask "where is the X" because they are the only person who knows where the X is, because they made the X, and without knowing that you can't do the job, and it takes them 2 minutes to respond, that is really not a problem for a lot of people.  It certainly isn't for me.  

There shouldn't be a situation where only one member of staff knows something unless it's something very new and not in operational use.  It is up to management to ensure that situation doesn't arise.  What would the company do if 'the only person that knows something' was taken seriously ill, was hit by the proverbial bus or left?

Ideally there shouldn't be, but there often is.  That's why you have people on month long notice periods.  If they do get hit by a bus, it might take two days to do something that could have taken five minutes.  As they haven't been hit by a bus, a 30 second phone call or a text message will prevent that.  Why would I mind if they call and ask me a question?  If I am not in a position to answer, I won't.

TELLIT01

I did once meet somebody who benefitted greatly from being the only person to know a system.  I was at an IT seminar and got talking to this guy at lunch.  He had worked for a major bank and had been made redundant.  What made thing all the sweeter for this guy was that his young manager had delighted in telling him they needed to get rid of 'older people' as they wouldn't be able to cope with the new technology.  It was only after he left that this manager realised that the person he had made redundant was the only person who still understood one of the old legacy systems which was only used at 1/4 ends.  The manager had to go grovelling back to the person made redundant to get their help.  He agreed to help, on his own terms.  Those included charging at full 'consultancy rates'.

Just another example of the short sightedness of not having more than one person able to support a system.

Ath_Wat

TELLIT01 said:

I did once meet somebody who benefitted greatly from being the only person to know a system.  I was at an IT seminar and got talking to this guy at lunch.  He had worked for a major bank and had been made redundant.  What made thing all the sweeter for this guy was that his young manager had delighted in telling him they needed to get rid of 'older people' as they wouldn't be able to cope with the new technology.  It was only after he left that this manager realised that the person he had made redundant was the only person who still understood one of the old legacy systems which was only used at 1/4 ends.  The manager had to go grovelling back to the person made redundant to get their help.  He agreed to help, on his own terms.  Those included charging at full 'consultancy rates'.

Just another example of the short sightedness of not having more than one person able to support a system.

You've jumped now to "Only one person able to support a system". My example is far more about one person who knows some specific and low level piece of information, which could be as simple as where the keys to a cabinet are, which save someone else having to spend ages looking for it.  This of course is commonplace.  If the person in question does fall under a bus, then once the second person has looked for it once and found it, they won't have to do so again.  But pointless spending all that time doing it when they can just ask.