In our latest member’s tip sourced from your excellent advice as profiled in Any Answers Parita Shah explains what is reasonable.
You have a few options on how to deal with the employees who need to take time off for child related issues and whilst you want to remain as supportive as you possibly can, you need to set some firm guidelines/boundaries which are effective as of now.
You need to set policy on how such absence from work will be dealt with for example:
- Employees will have to make the time up.
- Time off will have to be taken as unpaid leave.
Ask them if they can attend the school meetings at the end of the day rather than throughout the day.
See what other support networks they have in place i.e. can the fathers/family members not attend some of the meetings or take time off to look after the children?
The problem also here is that you are offering them ‘counselling sessions’. I work for an Employee Assistance Programme (Accor Services) and we have onsite trained counsellors and unless you are a trained counsellor yourself, you could be opening yourself up to legal claims against the company.
It also appears that these ‘counselling sessions’ are not achieving what they should be and the employees come out feeling listened to and think that they can carry on as they have been. Again, it’s about setting boundaries and making it clear that this behaviour will not be tolerated -20 days is an unacceptable amount of time off as well as time off sick for themselves. The employees are clearly more interested in taking rather than giving.
Also, rather than singling them out, perhaps have a general meeting to discuss the new changes in policy and the effect this will have on employees with children. You have been more than reasonable with their time off- however, it’s now time to get firm (but fair).
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Time off for child related issues
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Recruiting a UK-based worker for employment overseas
Open recruitment obligations
