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Steven Cesare, Ph.D.

A business owner from Tennessee called me the other day to talk about a problem he was having with one of his employee’s attendance record. Believe it or not, the issues of attendance, tardiness, and not reporting time off from work are becoming increasingly commonplace across the green industry. In specific, employees, usually non-exempt employees though it is now spreading to exempt employees as well, typically exhaust their sick leave balances very early in a benefit year. That condition obviously leaves them with no available sick leave hours for the remainder of the year, inevitably when it is often needed.

More often than not, an employee, out of sheer necessity, will meet with the supervisor, manager, or owner and request additional hours, openly solicit for an exception, or negotiate a “wink and a nod” tacit agreement whereby the employee and the owner will simply turn a blind-eye to this administrative circumstance because the employee is a “good employee who we don’t want to lose” over a policy violation as inconsequential as Sick Leave. That’s an interesting rationale to say the least.

While we would never conduct ourselves that way, we all know another company in which the aforementioned scenarios are practiced with some degree of regularity on a case-by-case basis.

Trust me: I get it.

There are times when we should (must?) be flexible.

Things happen.

Flexibility is one thing; foolishness is another. Integrity is difficult to regain once it has been relinquished.

Back to the Volunteer state. The business owner recounted the story about one of his employees who had taken 173 hours of sick leave during the last benefit year.

Yes. You read that correctly: 173 hours. You already did the math: It’s almost 22 full days off from work.

Maybe it’s due to my cynical nature, but I am willing to wager the actual hours were likely more than 173.

Just to be clear, those hours were not taken consecutively due to a debilitating accident, prolonged illness, or serious medical condition. Instead, they fit the all-too-common pattern of calling out sick on a Monday or Friday. Each time, the owner extended his generosity to the employee by granting him unpaid leave. Beyond the aegis of being flexible, the unspoken, albeit irrational, fear of a potential racial discrimination lawsuit weighed heavily on the business owner’s benevolent decision-making process each time.

Ultimately, the intimated question was finally verbalized: “Do you think I can fire the guy, Steve?” Jaded by the fulsome number of sick leave hours taken, I had to ask the business owner if the employee “had anything” (e.g., discriminatory content, harassing behaviors, illegal actions) hanging over the head of the business owner. He indignantly replied “No.” I then asked the business owner if the company had a formal Attendance Policy or Sick Leave Policy in its Employee Handbook. “Well, you know…” was the response.

While the lack of a formal policy was certainly problematic, the inordinate amount and well-documented sick leave abuse, allowed me to say the employee should be terminated for procedural, policy, and organizational culture issues. In the same breath, I prescriptively advised the business owner to draft an improved Sick Leave Policy and Attendance Policy in the next edition of the Employee Handbook, and to hold all employees, regardless of their protected classification status, accountable to said policies.

As we know all too well: Double Standards quickly decline into No Standards.

Oh, by the way. The business owner decided to not terminate the employee, suggesting that we should really start the process the right way during the next fiscal year.

While I support his executive-level decision, I can think of 173 reasons of what he should have done.

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