Just an idea to the OP.
Have you ever considered sharing medical assistants with another doctor? I think this is why medical practices have numerous doctors and workers. So the burden of management is not just on one doctor.
Millions of women give birth every year and manage not to completely blow off their employers in the process. Most of the time the whole thing (pregnancy through birth) is not a surprise and people are able to plan ahead.
**psychobunny **I feel for you. My business has between 2 and 4 employees. It sounds to me like you did the best you could. In my opinion you need to keep the new hire and not worry about whether or not you discriminated against a pregnant woman. You rightfully terminated an employee who has not proven to be effective at communication.
Your other employee is awesome and previous employees weren’t necessarily exemplary they were just, you know, professionals. Like anyone should be.
Nice for this woman to work 7 months and get a nice lump sum of vacation and sick time. Woohoo! :dubious:
The woman’s behavior warrants being fired, but luckily you don’t have to fire her, since she has pretty obviously quit.
What you should feel bad about is taking advantage of your other employee. She should not have to put up with a string of flaky co-workers or work on her vacation days.
Why is it the employer’s responsibility to care about the lady’s personal problems? Agreeing to pay someone to perform work isn’t like adopting them as your child and the assumption that someone having a baby is automatically going to transfer those problems to the employer is a strike against working women everywhere. The Urbanrednecks of the world are happy to avoid hiring women as a solution to not having to risk paying someone who is not working.
Who said they should not hire women?
Obviously the OP does not wish to deal with such a situation again so maybe next time she should “pre-screen” so to speak and keep it in mind when looking at a potential hire.
Why wouldn’t an employer care about a good worker in whom s/he has invested?
Why shouldn’t we all have compassion for each other? Is the “responsibility to care” really so onerous? (psychobunny’s posts don’t suggest that in my reading.)
Employing someone does not magically turn them into an inanimate component; employees are people; people have problems; some people are women; some problems are depression and day-care.
We don’t refuse to hire men in their twenties because they’ll be hungover every Monday, waste hours talking about football & ogling other workers, and have an inordinate sense of entitlement, do we? #NotAllMen? #NotAllNewMothers.
Parental leave is not paid, and this business would be exempt even it it were.
“Will whoever is taking a leak please put themselves on mute?”
Just curious; are you a full-time employee, or a contractor?
I can’t answer for alphaboi but one of my good friends had similar rules when she worked for a particular company. She was FT employee and had to hire someone to look after her kids, basically, from 7-5 M-F. Once the kids started school the babysitter she also had a local “mother’s hours” job which she went to after dropping off the kids. She’d leave the job to pick up the kids and would spend time with them and then start dinner prep.
When the kids were much younger the babysitter acted more like a nanny. She not only took care of them but she also did the laundry, shopping, and cooking.
When it costs you paying someone a salary while they do not work, yes, it is onerous for a small business. There is generally not extra money in the budget to pay someone who isn’t there to perform their job, plus other workers resent having to pick up the slack.
When I am an employee, it is my responsibility to leave my personal life at home. That doesn’t make me an “inanimate component”–it’s being professional. I’m there to do work and get paid for it, not to become a member of a surrogate family. Why would I want the very people who decide whether I continue working there to know about the condition of my uterus, my feelings, or about what my sprog is up to while I am at work? Yes, sometimes these things may intrude, in spite of my best efforts. That does not turn them into my employer’s problems, especially when the problems are “woman problems”–that would just reinforce the idea that hiring women means putting up with non-work-related personal issues. Thinking the employer ought to paternalistically “care” about the employee is distasteful.
Treating employees fairly is good. Treating employees with respect is good. Protecting employees’ well-being and safety is good. Once you start caring about their personal problems though, you probably already know too much and it will get in the way of running your business as well as possible and cost you the goodwill of other employees. You won’t be able to fire people who aren’t performing because your compassion will get in the way and you will bleed money you can’t afford to lose.
When they are hungover and fail to perform a few times, we can fire them, so it is a safer hire. No one is going to insist that it is their “right” to be hungover at your expense. I guess if they are alcoholics they could try to sue you for not accommodating their disability, but this seldom occurs.
Even if you can get away with firing an underperforming pregnant lady, obviously it makes you a huge douchelord.
A lot of people are pushing for it to be paid and required of every business. Even requiring it from large businesses only forces small businesses to either provide it or hire inferior employees.
More updates.
The employee texted employee #1 to ask how things were going at the office. We sent back a message saying we had hired somebody new and asked if she did not receive our email. She replied that she had not received the email. I think this is not true; otherwise why would she suddenly out of the blue text employee # 1?
I called her and told her that we had to bring in somebody new, but I was too cowardly and couldn’t fire her over the telephone. I asked when she was planning to come back and she stated that she thought FMLA guaranteed her 12 weeks. I told her that FMLA did not apply here and she offered to come back now. Not wanting to have to fire the new employee, I told her to take the additional time (she wants 12 weeks from the date of the birth, which is 6 weeks from now). She pressed me on whether I would still have her job and I told her that I couldn’t guarantee a full-time job but that I could at least bring her back half-time. Meanwhile, the new employee overheard and is now worried that she is going to lose her job when the prior employee comes back. So now I have committed to keeping them both on the payroll. It is a tough choice. The new employee is somewhat slow to pick up on things and is making mistakes but has a great personality. The one on maternity leave does fantastic work but does not have a great personality and employee # 1 would prefer the new hire. Frankly, if the new hire was a little better, I would have fired the one on leave but as it stands, I don’t want to fire her in case the new employee doesn’t work out and I don’t want to fire the new employee in case the prior one decides she does not want to return or has daycare problems etc. No matter what I do I am in trouble.
Maybe I’ve missed something here psychobunny, but do you ever make a decision and stick to it?
Didn’t you already (justifiably) fire baby-producing employee?
How does as an EX employee who seemingly lies about about not having received the relevant email advising her of such, magically garner another 6 weeks leave?
Can you blame the new employee for being concerned about her job? Do you not consider that this anxiety will affect her learning ability and job performance?
Is your business musical chairs?
I have no idea on what you base your decisions, but to me, the outcome seems to produce nothing but some form of mental cruelty for ALL concerned - particularly for loyal employee #1 who has to listen to, work through, tolerate, and clean up your riduculous mess.
Seems to me that baby mummy has not only kept the job she didn’t have, but has promoted herself to boss.
If you find it impossible to behave like the one in charge, give employee #1 the role of staff manager with suitable and affordable remuneration, and let her do it.
I’m not sure whether you’re after sympathy, advice, or a spoonful of cement to harden up.
You are right. This was a massive fail which is why I didn’t want to do this over the telephone in the first place. I just find it hard to fire somebody who does a good job simply because she didn’t communicate well when she was out on maternity leave. I have to think that she was busy with the baby and it seems cruel to fire somebody who now has a child to support. I don’t have as much of a problem firing people who give me a good reason but as I said in the OP, I knew that this situation would leave me in trouble. I like this employee and when I tried to tell her that I had hired somebody else because I hadn’t heard from her she started to argue that it had technically been only 6 weeks since the baby was born and that she had told me she would be out for 6-8 weeks and frankly, I hate having people be upset with me.
This does not address the issue you brought up, the “responsibility to care about the lady’s personal problems”.
Paying someone and caring that s/he has (a) problem(s) in the personal sphere are different things. Some people do not find it onerous to care about employees or co-workers and their personal issues, even for ladies.
Paid time off is a different issue, and one that does not apply here.
Yep, I understand that; and I guarantee you, you haven’t upset anyone - they’re probably way beyond that.
To me “upsetting” someone is pretty non-specific; I define it as something trivial and transient. Some kind of misunderstanding that’s either quite simply sorted, or resolves itself.
What you’ve done instead is create weeks and weeks of prolonged anxiety and distress for three people, and yourself - making it four. That doesn’t include any respective partners or peripherals directly or inadvertently drawn into, or affected by this clusterfuck.
You’ve negatively impacted your own business. You’ve made your staff not look forward to coming to work. You’ve put yourself in the position of having your employees tell you what they’re doing. If they feel like it. And if it turns out that way. You’ve probably lost some element of respect, or regard from your ever-loyal, ever-flexible employee #1. Maybe she comes in even when she’s on leave because if the pressure’s on and decisions have to be made, the aftermath of when you’ve dealt with it in her absence is worse than interrupting her (well earned) break.
Who knows.
I understand your reticence to fire someone because their communication wasn’t clear - without being too harsh, it’s really because of the pot calling the kettle. There has been no proactive, definitive and clear communication from you to anyone - and you’re the boss. Her being pregnant just made it easier for you to continue being ineffective.
So - brilliant. Your strategy’s working. “Upset” is probably running fourth to “confused” “anxious” “stressed” and “overworked”.
Honestly, deal with your issues with confrontation. Learn how to properly manage staff. Be the boss, not the bff. Were you confident in your role, none of this would have happened.
I suspect everything will work itself shortly, when Employee #1 finally gets tired of all this and finds a new job, leaving you with the 2 inferior employees.
…1 really, muldoonthief. They’ll be sharing the job.
The onerous part comes up when you’ve made the mistake of allowing yourself to “care” and then ended up in the position of not being able to pull the trigger and do what needs to be done. Case in point: this one.
I was just talking about this yesterday re: my workplace. This is what always happens: to avoid having one person upset with you, either EVERYBODY is upset with you, or you offload the problem onto someone else. Easy to say, harder to do, I know.
With Urbanredneck’s comments about not hiring women under 40, that leaves women with ten years of employability!
Psychobunny, although you really should have contacted the employee directly first before terminating her, I don’t think you’ve acted badly.
I was once let go from one position (sort of - it’s part of a job) due to ill health. They knew I was ill when they hired me and knew that was why, essentially, they were able to hire someone with my experience and skills and the rate and contract they were offering. Later my illness worsened leading to no-shows on two occasions due to collapses on the way to work. They felt really bad about saying they couldn’t hire me any more for that specific short-term position but I emailed to say not to worry, because I totally understood (plus various niceties). They have had me work for them again since when I’ve been available, which is rarely.
It’s possible this employee will also be understanding, or just too busy with the child to care. It’s also possible she didn’t contact you due to post-partum depression or something else similar, but even if that’s the case, it’s not your fault. Don’t be too hard on yourself.