I’m the Director of a large environmental company in CT, I recently hired a woman who was fired from her last job for saying a family obligation was above her work duties. I listened to her in the interview, called her references and spoke with her last boss. When calling references I ask three questions from HR. What was her prior salary, what are the dates of her employment with you and would you hire her back.
For the last question I was asked to ‘hold’. When the person came back it was a man - her last boss - he said no he would not hire her back. Then went on to elaborate that she would routinely put her family obligations before her work obligations. Indulging him a bit I asked what her specific family obligations were - this went against my better judgement to simply say thank you and goodbye. He said she would take 2 hour lunch breaks because her son was sick and neede to get picked up at daycare. I asked the frequency of this and he said twice in the last month.
This corroborated what she mentioned in the interview. Now I know I work with a bunch of tree hugg’in dirt worshippers and this is as far from corporate life as you can get…but to me those minor infractions are not grounds for termination. I do not have children yet, but when I do I would think that they would rank quite high on the totem pole. If she is upfront and honest with me, and is not ditching work to go to the beach I have no problem is she needs to leave to get her sone at daycare.
For others out there in similar situations or positions what would you do? If in management would you allow a certain amount of leeway when it comes to familial obligation? Would it depend on the job, the perseverance of the employee? Honesty?
We’ll see how she works out, but to me it was a no brainer. She has held senior positions and done very well. Exemplary reviews from all but the last place of employ.
As long as there is no abuse of the freedom to go get your kid, and thatthe family obligation is a proper one i.e. not one where you are going to a 1 pm birthday party on a beach with margaritas…even then if you take half a day and get permission in advance I’d be ok with it.
I had a similar problem with my last job - the owner of the company didn’t understand that as a single mother, which I was at the time, it was all on me when something happened to my son. He was still a little one - this was all before he turned 6 - so it wasn’t like I could leave him home with the cough syrup and the tylenol and go to work! I got what I needed to get done, done - I was the office manager - it wasn’t like I had any deadlines to deal with. When I had to stay home I would make collection phone calls for example so I was doing something productive - but his way of thinking was that since HE never had to do that with his kids and his kids weren’t sick as much as mine (mine had ear infection troubles - ended up with tubes) and he didn’t have to take off I shouldn’t. The idiot. His wife was a SAHM. No shit, he didn’t have to stay home.
Probably the biggest ass I’ve ever worked for - and his kids were just as bad (family business).
IANA Hiring Manager, but if an otherwise great employee needs to take the occassional long lunch break to deal with family matters, I’d be perfectly OK with that. So long as they are meeting their targets, the actual hours of work isn’t such an issue.
The only exception to this is positions where hours worked is an issue, for example a sales person in a book shop can’t have this degree of flexibility.
If I understand you correctly, she wasn’t fired for these incidents, the previous employee is merely stating he wouldn’t hire her again? He sounds like an arse.
I don’t take long vacations, but I do and will take the occasional couple of hours off to go see a performance or help out in the classroom for an hour or take my kid to the dentist. And my sick days are for everyone–I’m rarely sick myself, but if one of my kids has a fever, they aren’t going to school that day. Nobody I’ve worked with has ever had a problem with it. The only person I’ve ever seen let go for abusing leave time was a single woman who kept mangling herself in motorcycle racing accidents.
It seems to me that a company that is generous with leave time in those situations is going to have happier and more productive employees. If an employee knows what amount of work is to be done in what amount of time, and as long as the work gets done, it should be ok to take leave like you described once in a while. I think most people would consider twice a month to be very reasonable. Twice a week? That’s unreasonable. I know some people are hardasses when it comes to employees…they want them there 16 hours a day and to take work home and NOTHING comes before work. Other companies have generous benefits when it comes to personal time. I’m sure there are studies out there that show which companies have less employee turnover, happier workers, more loyal works, more productivity, etc. in each situation.
Another thought I have is in regards to “family” leave. I wish it weren’t called that, and I wish it were given to everyone. I’m single and have no children. My coworkers all take advantage of “family” leave. They can take sick time for ANYthing related to their children’s health…and they do. (And I know it’s not always an emergency. If their baby sitter cancels, they take a sick day.) But not me. Everyone knows I don’t have kids, so if I take a sick day…I better be sick. (And I don’t take a sick day unless I’m sick.)
And guess who is always asked to cover for the people taking care of their kids?
My ex-wife is a palliative care specialist looking after people dying at home. She once told me that if you want to find out where a person’s job fits within the scheme of their life just listen to people on their deathbed. She said she had never heard anyone say that they wished they had spent more time at the office while they were well. She said that most people she dealt with she would have no idea what they did for a living because it didn’t matter.
I think it depends on the job and both the employer and employee need to be up front before they even get the job as to what the expectations are for taking personal time and exactly how much personal time they may need.
Certain jobs can afford if someone needs to leave unexpectedly and they can often make up the work later or have someone fill in for them.
But other jobs need someone to be on-site dependably. For example if you owned a small retail shop that was normally manned by just one person. It would be difficult to try to stay in business if that person you hired had the habit of suddenly leaving every couple weeks and having to close the store.
I think the ex-boss phrased this very interestingly. He said twice in the last month. She may not have taken any other time off for family emergencies, but happened to have two incidents that fell close together. It seems like if it was a continual issue, he would have said twice a month or 10 times in the past year, or whatever.
RWS, I agree on your points, but how is this:
not an emergency? If you don’t have anyone to stay with your kid, what are you supposed to do?
Where I work, long hours and “dedication to the job” are unspoken requirements. If you put in long hours, and show the proper level of dedication, they don’t mind if you take two hour lunches or have fairly frequent family emergencies. On the other hand, if you arrive every day at nine and scarper at five, and then you also have frequent absences, you’re in trouble. Good employees get the slack they need; adequate employees get no slack at all. Not really fair, but it seems to be par for the course right now in the still-shaky tech world. Supposedly in ten years, when all the boomers are gone, employees will again have the upper hand.
Yeah…I agree, that’s an emergency. I meant a health-related emergency. Sick days are specifically and only for health related issues.
That was why I said I wish it weren’t called “sick leave.” Let’s give EVERYone time off for any reason so that those of us who aren’t married and don’t have kids can benefit, too.
I think every business/organization is different and there just won’t be one solution…it’s a great topic!
(BTW…the fact that you are investigating this and giving her the benefit of the doubt…that is awesome. I’d like to work for someone like you. The boss may or may not be unreasonable, and I think it’s awesome you didn’t automatically side with him.)
If a person gets the job done, flexibility increases satisfaction, and low turnover is a bigger plus than someone taking an hour in an emergency is a minus. It sounds like she informed people of where she was.
I worked in a well-known electronics company where a director was famous for missing the birth of a baby in order to attend a meeting. That kind of crap is one of the many reasons I left. I bet managers who count every second a person is away never count the extra time they spend finishing things up out of dedication.
If her child was genuinely ill, he may have been on shaky ground firing her due to the FMLA, if his company was covered by that. I’d say if you’re thinking of hiring this woman, just make sure you are on the same page in terms of how intermittent leave should be handled. Do you allow vacation time to be used by the hour? Do you expect time to be made up in the office? Is this a situation where employees are managed strictly by what they accomplish? It could be a good fit for both of you.
I think this is a significant point. If she was the firm’s receptionist and they needed her to answer the phones or something, they might not want to tlerate unpredictable lunchbreaks. But in most jobs, considerable flexibility can be permitted.
In our office, you are supposed to put in 8.5 hours per day. You can report anytime between 6-9:30 a.m. The “core hours” are 9:30-3:30 - if you are out between those times other than lunch you are supposed to request leave - which is freely authorized.
Lunch is supposed to be 1/2 hour between 11:30-1:30, tho most people combine their breaks to take an hour for lunch. Realistically, no one keeps track of when you take lunch, if you leave the office, or how long you are out. If you need to take an extra hour or so for lunch you can just stay an extra hour (as long as you came in before 8:30).
Same thing if you need to do something in the middle of the morning or afternoon. Just tell your boss you are cutting out for a bit and will stick around later to make up the time.
Sure, some leeway. I think I’m fairly generous, too. Most people do not take advantage.
I did have one employee who took advantage, and would take time out of the office when her kids were sick, AND took time out saying her kids were sick when they weren’t. When I had proof of this (an email sent to another colleague describing her great day off at the beach), she was fired … although obviously, I think this situation went beyond issues of family obligations.
I had another situation that was problematic. I wouldn’t say the employee was abusing the time out of the office, because I’m fairly confident her kids really were sick. However, this started to add up to a lot of time.
I was a little taken aback when she told another colleague that her husband never left work to pick up a sick child because his boss was a jerk, so it was great that she could always leave work, because her boss (me) was nice. This really struck me as being not exactly what I hoped for as a manager.
We ended up having some conversations about the frequency issue … this is a hard conversation to have, because I felt like I was presuming to give advice about how to deal with her children … but I did feel obligated to give guidance about how to deal with her job.
And if you get really, really sick tomorrow, who’ll cover for you? You’re gonna get sick sooner or later, unless you’re immortal.
Sick leave isn’t fun, it’s just a necessity employers have to deal with. The nature of sick leave allocation is such that people who don’t need any never take any. That’s unfair in a sense, but hey, at least you aren’t sick.
When I was hired at my present job I was married with one child. I am now the mother of two, and although married I function as a single parent because my husband is only in town for about 4 days a month. So my situation has changed drastically. My boss sat me down and said that basically they did not expect me to stay past five anymore and knew that since my son would be starting grade school and the younger one was still *very * young that I would be in and out from time to time and that as long as I kept my job up that I should not worry about it. They told me that they hired me to do a certain job, and that I needed to do the job, not the hours. I have been given this leeway because when I am here, I produce. I will have times when I am in early and don’t leave or take a long lunch for a long time, and then there will be times that school is getting started so I may be gone half a day every week for a month or so. We also had a girl that left early every other Friday to meet her ex-husband to do the “child swap” on time.
These are all things my company allows for works with. It may not be the same everywhere. My point is that we don’t look at hard numbers (you lost 7 hours last month on long lunches) unless we notice a problem getting started and start tracking it then.
Also - one of my bosses did try to get his wife to schedule a C-Section around a meeting (don’t know if that’s 100% true or company legend) and he would never tell me or any employee that work is more important than family (maybe he got an earful and learned his lesson on that one). My industry is pretty much a “get it there on time” dead-line oriented place and we would not begrudge a coworker for having to take time off to help his or her family.
Well I agree you have fine ideas it doesn’t work out that way. People with kids use it as an excuse to dump on people without kids. Your time is no less valuable than mine. I feel if you have kids you have to understand that it is YOUR obligation to support them.
I would almost guarantee that parents don’t realize how much they expect companies to bend over backwards to help raise their kids.
As long as your fair about it, I have no issue, but I am not in the business of raising your kid. Nor giving up my life, because you feel other people should support your children.
I would ask myself, did I really do the job as well as the childless people? Did I take only time off I needed? Did I make up the time? How does my taking time off impose on the company and the other employees? If you’ve never asked yourself this then you are taking advantage.
Like I said your ideas are fine, but in real life, it don’t work out that way.
One of the benefits of my job is paid leave and sick leave and if I need it, I’m damned well going to use it. Are childless people who take vacations just doing it because they want to dump work on the rest of us?