Managing Leave
Eligibility, criteria, and usage of leave is governed by applicable bargaining agreements and personnel plans. Supervisors should refer to the applicable agreement or plan for managing an employee's leave accumulation and usage.
Supervisor's Responsibilities
- Communicating attendance and leave expectations
- Maintaining employee attendance records
- Ensuring accurate time records
- Consistent review and approval of Request for Temporary Absence: Keeping in mind, workload, staffing needs, determining applicable leave, leave eligibility and/or available balance, and requests from other employees
- Providing timely response to employee
Monitoring Sick Leave
- Keep attendance records
- Consider review when exceed 6 separate incidents in a fixed 12-month period
Recognizing Sick Leave Abuse
- Frequency and reason for sick leave use
- Patterns of sick leave absence
- Employees unused sick leave balance
- Impact of absence on the work load and employees
- Absences when vacation originally denied
What to do if an Employee is Abusing Sick Leave
- Review records and analyze facts before counseling
- Consider similar situations for consistency
- Determine why there are attendance problems
- Assess option of union representation at counseling session
- Counsel employee and document
- Describe attendance concerns to the employee
- Discuss why attendance is important to you and the employee
- Ask employee for solutions
- Agree on specific employee action
- Provide letter of expectations regarding attendance
- Refer to Employee Assistance Program
- Indicate that if no improvement occurs, discipline may be imposed i.e.
- Placing the employee on Sick Leave Review
- Formal disciplinary action, up to and including termination
- Follow up with employee
