I work in a small department of a large corporation and have a dilema. The supervisor of our group takes an excessive amount of time off. Since January she has been off 54 days and it is really killing the morale of the whole group mainly because the time off is not being reported and our manager appears to be covering it up. In addition to that , she only works a 6.5 hour work day (coming in at 9:30 and leaving at 4). Again upper management is not aware of her hours. This is not a new situation either. This basically has been going on for a few years and is escalating. My question is this: should we report it? We do have an ethics hotline and I was considering calling the hotline. The whole situation just feels so rotten. What would you do?
Nothing. In fact some people would feel it is a benefit not to have a supervisor around yelling at them, telling them to do this and that…
Is it possible she is doing something like caring for a sick relative, and the manager is trying to keep that private?
Also, what kind of work do you do where you have an ethical obligation to report something like this?
Is your supervisor an hourly or salaried employee? Does the supervisor have an arrangement with the next level of management about which you may be unaware?
It’s not an ethical dilemma, but it’s definitely a rotten situation. It sucks when you have a boss who uses his or her position to skirt the rules.
Unfortunately for the OP, there’s no real way of knowing if the rules are being skirted. If you’ve been keeping track of all her days off, you could try an anonymous letter her immediate supervisor with all the data meticulously outlined. Of course, you work in a small department so this might end up coming back to bite you in the ass.
What do you see as the best possible outcome here, Birdlegs? Your manager getting fired? Or would you prefer to see her at work every day from 9-5?
Or she might be sick herself, and not able to work a full day every day. If the people she supervises are having to pick up any slack, then probably her manager needs to hire an assistant for her. But if her manager is content with her work, and she’s managing to get her work done and not being a burden on others, then it’s probably nobody else’s business.
Of course, it’s also possible that her manager is just playing favorites, or that she is sleeping with the manager, or that she has pictures of the manager, the squid, and the underage cheerleaders.
Here’s a challenge to those in corporate life for a few decades. Let’s add up the total number of co-workers who improved their careers by reporting on problem supervisors.
I’ll go first. [carry the zero, add the other zero, multiply…]
I’ve got zero. Anyone else?
To the OP: I don’t mean to be a smartass, but I cannot imagine any scenario where reporting management malfeasance to management will end well.
It is not your job to supervise your supervisor. Sit down, do your job to the best of your ability and keep your nose out of it. Let her supervisor supervise her.
The only exception to the above is if, for some reason, her absence is negatively affecting your job performance. If this is the case you can bring it up with her in as oblique a manner as possible. Something like, “I’ve found lately I’ve been needing more XXX. What are your suggestions for where I can get XXX during the times you are not available in the office?” Document the fact that you had this conversation in case your lowered job performance becomes a concern at work.
If her absence is not negatively affecting your ability to perform (and this does not include office morale) then no good will come of trying to report it.
MYOB
Uh, this literally is the OP’s business.
That being said, I’d probably keep my head down in this situation & try not to make any enemies.
I know I’m swimming against the tide here, but if your ethics hotline is truly anonymous, call it in. It is bad for morale if she is just slacking off, and morale effects work. If she isn’t just slacking off, but has problems, it just might be that Management doesn’t know about it, and might even be able to help her.
Other than morale, what is the impact to you and your peers? Bigger - what is the impact to the company?
Work isn’t getting done because you need to pick up the slack?
No guidance, you can’t get questions answered because she isn’t around enough?
Find out how its impacting the COMPANY (i.e. not your “petty” resentment), then have a skip level with her boss.
“Barb has been out a ton this year - and we haven’t pried into her personal business, but we’ve been assuming that something is up - health problems, elderly parent. We want to be fully supportive of whatever is going on in her life - but we are having some challenges with the situation - when she is out, we don’t get our questions answered and are having a hard time getting the work turned around to meet expectations. I don’t know how long this will last, but would you consider appointing an interim supervisor until Barb can be back full time?”
This sort of approach let your grand boss save face (Barb has a personal issue he knows about), tells him why its his problem (you can’t turn around work to meet expectations without guidance) and gives him an option to correct the issue without firing Barb (that, if there isn’t a personal issue, he won’t take - he’ll talk to Barb).
This is perfect and if the answers to the first 4 questions are “nothing but it isn’t fair” then follow the earlier advice and ignore it and forget it, it’s none of your business.
This is not only the only thing you can safely do, this is the best you can do. Management tends to listen to these kinds of comments more than straight up complaints.
Are you claiming that she is falsifying her payroll records and getting paid for days and hours she is not there? Do you know this for a fact, or is she possibly using PTO time for all this alleged time off? Is she hourly or salaried? Does she schedule this time off in advance, or just not show up for a day with no forewarning? On these days she is leaving early, is she also taking a lunch break (off the clock) or is she working straight through? Do you see the payroll sheets and see exactly how many hours she is getting paid for, and the straight time/PTO breakdown of those hours?
If she is not doing anything illegal like falsifying her timesheets, I’m not sure that the team morale card is the one you want to play. Unless her absence just screws up productivity because you need her there to do A so you all can do B, and B is not getting done as a result, and you all are getting blamed for it. Then I think you have a legitimate complaint. Just whining because she may have brokered a better deal on her hours due to possible family care needs (we once had a manager in our company who left “early” everyday which frosted everyone’s cupcakes even though we didn’t even work in the same city as her…turned out she had arranged all this with the regional when she was hired due to a childcare arrangement that had very strict pickup times, and her spouse could not do the pickup) or other conditions than you lot managed isn’t a real legitimate HR complaint.
I’ve reported a bad boss to upper management. They investigated my allegations and fired the boss. As there were only 5 of us in the office, I didn’t even bother to hide the fact that it was me who ratted out my boss. There were no repercussions for me.
However if I could have hidden who I was, I would have. If there’s a hotline where you can remain anonymous, use it. And don’t tell ANYONE you did it. ANYONE. If your boss isn’t doing her job, eventually it’s going to come down on everyone in the department in some way or the other. It might already be happening and you just don’t see it yet. It could be in things like smaller pay raises and bonuses.
Or you could try to transfer to another department or find another job.
Heck, I have an engineer who reports to me, and takes an excessive amount of sick time. (He’s 26 years old, no kids, seemingly healthy, and took over 90 hours of sick leave last year.) And there’s nothing I can do about it.
Unless it’s having a very large impact to you personally, the correct thing to do is probably nothing.
If it is impacting you to the point that you think it may result in the entire group being replaced or it just makes your job impossible, then either 1 or 2 things would make sense, IMO.
The best approach would be to discuss with someone in senior management that you have a close personal relationship with. Just let them know about your concern and ask for their advice - there’s a decent chance that they just handle it themselves and tell you not to worry about it.
The other option is the completely anonymous method via the ethics hot line. If you do this, do it once, don’t follow up, and don’t let anyone know that you’ve done it.
My average workday is 5 hours. I like to think I’m organized and efficient.
If you’re going to do this, the sentence should be (as it is in the OP) exactly how many days she’s been out since January and what hours she works. One person’s idea of “a ton” is another person’s “half day.” I’m not kidding. I know a teacher who was never absent for decades. One day, she slipped and fell on some icy steps while guiding students into the school. She went to the hospital and returned with a cast during lunch, so she only missed half a school day. She wasn’t absent for the rest of the school year.
Nevertheless, her supervisor marked her as being “excessively absent” for that year. 
You’ll be pleased to know that she appealed, and the “excessively absent” note was removed from her record.