Managing sick or emergency leave

It isn’t easy for anyone managing others to know how to respond to emergency time off or even sick leave requests. There is no doubt that over and over again, sick leave and emergency time out options have been abused by some employees, thus making it harder for those with genuine reasons who need to take time off. 

Having been in both situations: where I’ve been managed and where I’ve had to manage, I can see the troubles both sides face. There are some employees who are genuinely sickly. Some problems, which appear trifling to the eye, can really get in the way of someone being able to come in to work consistently. There are also those who have to shoulder slightly more arduous circumstances than the rest, for one reason or other. For some of these, time off options have been a lifeline but may have at various points subjected them to sharp criticism. Managers don’t always feel they’ve got a grasp of the times when someone calls in sick or needs an emergency time out. 

We can quite easily sympathise with some of these managers too. You get the employees who’re constantly ‘sick’ or who need time out urgently for some fictitious problem or other. You know it too! There’s almost always some kind of give away. You look at their work history and you see their emergencies almost always happen on the Monday or Friday of a long weekend. Sometimes, their social media pages give them away. This behaviour doesn’t only trouble management, it causes difficulties to the teams these individuals are a part of as now team members have to pull their weight as well. 

I don’t have a solution as to how to stop people from abusing their medical or emergency leave options. A lot of this boils down to the belief system or values that the individual holds. I am in favour of bosses having chats with truant employees, especially when there are performance issues. This is much needed. However, I am also in favour of perhaps granting the time out when sought so that genuine requests don’t get turned down. It is impossible to sometimes know. People in charge shouldn’t have to harden themselves so much that they no longer reflect their humanity. That would be the recipe for disaster. Instead, if there’s a management of expectations where they were concerned that out of all their employees, some will have genuine problems and some will be less so, their approach can be to be more supportive. There doesn’t have to be an oppressive stance taken to weed out such behaviour. It doesn’t make those in charge weaker to do this. 

There could maybe be a more robust observation of employees and their performance. A follow through when targets aren’t met or when performance is below par would put the manager in a better position to act without second guessing themselves or being second guessed. They can be seen to be acting fairly. I think it would also preserve them from having to act in a manner that may cause them to lose the human element of who they are. This happens far too often when we seek to exercise control over all things. 

Perhaps it is also necessary when we manage people, to recognise that just because someone takes us for a ride, it doesn’t necessarily make us weak. If there are suitable follow throughs, then there is a definite observance of boundaries, which can only be lauded. What needs to be recognised is those who abuse the options of sick or emergency leave are the ones who should be checking their integrity. They’re the ones who really are guilty of making the work place less humane as they put pressures on people at different levels. 

There isn’t a foolproof solution. I do think though, it isn’t the same as a situation of applying for annual leave, when it may be easier to negotiate whether the application should be approved or not. Refusal is tougher when someone needs a sick day or needs to utilise their emergency leave options for whatever reason, genuine or fictitious. For annual leave, is easier to say that an application for leave isn’t going to be accepted because of a legitimate reason, such as a peak period of that others have already applied for leave ahead of time. Again,  the tricky bit is regulating emergency and sick leave. Unnecessary comments to guilt the person requesting may be made wrongly and in such situations, more damage than good is done. So- instead of worrying about losing control, leave the discussion about whether it was appropriate or not for such leave to have been taken and raise doubts  if any, once the person returns. It will be worthwhile to have such discussions, hard as they may be because they are not emotionally charged but rather evidence based or form part of an evidence collecting exercise.