To think you shouldn’t leave job requirements to last minute?

[Elphie54]

At my job, every year you have to attend at least 4 continuing education meetings a year or face displinary action. I think they are very fair in how they offer them. They have 2 per month, one a morning session and one an evening session, on two different days of the week. They are also very lenient in what qualifies as attendance (basically as long as you are there at some point during the meeting and sign in, you are marked as present, even if late or leave early). Most of us manage to go to at least 6 to 8 a year if not more since they are actually beneficial and afterwards are used as forum to express any concern we have as employees. Every year, for the past 10 years, they have always had only one meeting in December as opposed to two because of the holidays.

Today at the meeting, they issued a reminder that there was only one meeting in December. My one coworker (who makes mountains out of mole hills anyway) is complaining because now he does not have enough meetings for the year. Apparently he was counting on there being 2 meetings in December. My sympathy was lost when he said he was already on notice because he only attended 3 last year, so not getting enough this year could mean dismissal.

AIBU to think, then maybe you shouldn’t have left it to last minute?

He's an idiot. The December arrangements should have been expected and everyone else seemed to work it out!
I get why people are wary about the idea of being expected to show up for unpaid time, but this set up does seem to try to make that easy for you, so I've heard of far worse (not that it has to be a race to the bottom...) If they put in the job description that you have to do this and it's included in the salary I bet they'd be covered.

It’s slightly weirder that you can’t see what a stupid tick box policy it is though.

I get the argument that he hasn’t met the requirement. But your employer can’t really give a toss about CPD if you don’t need to attend all the session but just sign in, so only attending 3 out of 4 sessions being a disciplinary offence seems a bit pointless.

It is in the job description and job contracts. We are on hourly wages, not salary. Not sure where I have the impression this was unpaid. We get paid 1.5 hrs per sign in (if we are not already on the clock and don’t abuse it -ie come sign in and immediately leave constantly). They last about an hour to an hour and half. If you go outside the company for other continuing education credits, it is not paid at all.

It's because you talked about not being given time off to attend them and not having time within working hours. But if it's paid and you're also receiving the normal employee benefits of working more hours such as pension contributions, counting towards SMP calculations where relevant and accrued annual leave for those hours (not that it would be much but you should still get it) that changes everything. If you're not getting those things then your employer would be taking the piss.

Although I would still be concerned about the tick box approach.

It's not the companies fault. He accepted the job knowing the terms. You don't like the terms? Don't take the job or quit. He gets paid to do the training. He is expected to do it and was told that. And he then expected to be able to fit in two trainings when he hasn't managed the rest of the year but everyone else has?

He is a moron and will have to face the consequences.

I am sorry I wasn’t clear. Yes its paid. The number of hours we would accrue for PTO is minimal, but does factor in.

I have no sympathy for him. It's not like he's only just found out this month that he has to attend x days. He's known for at least 2 years.

Elphie given what you've said above I would have zero sympathy whatsoever. You are paid to attend the training and contracted to attend. He's very silly for not doing so.

I don't see it as necessarily a tick box exercise. It is giving people agency to make some decisions about what cpd they need. One person might need to brush up on EXCEL but another one on PowerPoint. By giving the choice people don't have to sit through stuff they already know, and at the same time recognising that someone might need to develop their PowerPoint skills, so goes to half that session but then is called away for an emergency. It is still more useful for them to have gone to half a PowerPoint session that they do need than the whole of an Excel session which they don't.

Sadly most companies don't take cpd that seriously so colleague will probably get another telling off as it is easier than recruiting and training someone else.

Is this the nation's largest employer by chance?

Then I'm unsympathetic.

I think he's a bit silly not to plan things better.

But really, sign in and disappear? What on earth is the point?

“But really, sign in and disappear? What on earth is the point?“

Most people don’t just disappear. The ones who are I attendance while currently working on a truck, do get called away by dispatch fairly often. Can’t control that unfortunately,