In a recent poll The HR Dept asked employers if they thought workplace absence would increase during the UK’s ‘Summer of Sport’ and whether they had a plan in place to deal with this. We can now reveal that 42% of respondents expected workplace absence to increase during the summer due to the Olympics and Euro 2012. Of these respondents, a further 47% said they didn’t have a plan to deal with unauthorised absences. British employers need to get to grips with managing all those employees who come knocking on the door asking to leave early to watch this summer’s sporting events.
The HR Dept comments: “We never advocate creating a policy for the sake of creating a policy. Employers should use existing policies and procedures for dealing with holiday requests, unauthorised absences and so on. It would be useful to have an IT/social media policy which would prohibit employees misusing the internet to live stream sporting events while they are meant to be working. If employers are concerned that their policies/procedures do not cover all possible scenarios, then The HR Dept would be more than happy to help.”
Employers should absolutely not accuse their employees of pulling a ‘sickie’ without reasonable evidence (seeing one of your ‘sick’ employees appear in TV coverage would be evidence enough!). Here are our top three excuses from employees and what employers have interpreted them as:
Employee: [Monday morning] I can’t come into work today as
I have come down with food poisoning.
Employer: Probably too much alcohol rather than bad prawns!
Employee: [Friday] My child is unwell and there’s no one else
to look after him/her.
Employer: Looks like they want a head start to their weekend.
Employee: I have to go to my Gran’s funeral.
Employer: Again? How many grandmothers can one person have?
If you would like some advice on managing holiday and unauthorised absence, speak to The HR Dept.
The HR Dept specialises in advising small and medium sized businesses on all employment issues.
