Devoted to Managers and those that seek to improve their management skills

We have been talking about sick leave in the last two posts. Now I want to talk about employee leave in general. Obviously there will be all types of reasons given by employees to have days off or extended leave. 

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We, as managers can’t just let things happen and then respond to it. We must have policies in place so that all parties involved will know what is expected and required when things in life happen that can affect their job attendance. 

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Here are a few policies you need in place to manage the times when this will happen:

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Require employees to schedule leave in advance, if possible. Sometimes, an employee cannot know ahead of time that she will need time off -- for a sudden illness or family emergency, for example. In all other circumstances, however, you should ask your employees to schedule leave -- particularly vacations -- at least a month in advance. This will help you make sure your staffing needs are met, particularly during summers and holidays. 

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Adopt a sensible vacation accrual policy. Many of us enjoy taking a longer vacation from time to time, and a policy that allows employees to save up a long stretch of vacation time -- four weeks, say -- for this purpose is reasonable. You may want to put some cap on how much vacation time your employees can accrue or use at one time, however. Otherwise, you may suddenly have several employees asking for months off at a time. And until those employees take their long vacation, they may suffer from job burn-out from years of work without time off. 

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Discourage misuse of sick leave. Some employees treat sick leave as an extra allotment of vacation days. Crack down on these slackers by requiring employees to call in each day they are ill, requiring a doctor's note for serious illnesses and monitoring patterns of sick leave use. Do you have employees who only seem to call in sick on Mondays and Fridays? Do some employees claim illness at the end of every year, in an effort to take advantage of unused sick time? Counsel these employees about the proper use of sick leave and discipline those who abuse the system. 

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Consider what you will pay when an employee quits or is fired. If your policy allows paid leave to accrue, you must decide whether to pay out unused leave to departing employees. Some states, including California , Illinois , Iowa , Louisiana , Maine , Massachusetts , North Carolina , Oregon , Rhode Island and Tennessee , require payment of accrued vacation time when employment ends. Although you are generally not required to pay out unused sick days, some employers do, perhaps believing that this encourages employees not to misuse sick leave 

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While I have seen shoddy, uncertain policies cause a lot of problems in big business, in a small business, failure to take these things into account could cause it to fail. 

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This is part of the nuts and bolts of running a business that we are always in danger of neglecting or going over things sloppily. Whatever you do, make sure that isn’t you. Your business survival depends upon it.  

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Keep the above concepts in mind and make sure things are written down and communicated to all of your employees.

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It wouldn’t hurt at all to occasionally bring them into remembrance of what your company policy state. That way there will be no surprises and you eliminate, to a large degree, antagonism between the management and the workers. That’s just good for business!