Lying colleague

[rebus1]

I work in a small department, have been there a few years, and line manage 4 members of staff. I have a job share who shares this responsibility but they have been off ill for a couple of months. We all basically do the same job but I and my job share sort rotas etc and get paid a bit more but we're not management. It has been a bit busier for all of us (especially the 4 full time members of staff) since my job share has been off.

One of my colleagues performance hasn't been brilliant recently. Everyone else has really stepped up but she has almost done the opposite. We have cut her some slack as she has a few issues at home and when she does do her job properly she's really good. I was just hoping she'd go back to normal and I wouldn't have to escalate any performance issues.

However she told one of our team that she was going on holiday for 10 days rather than the booked 7 and she would be calling in sick. The colleague told me and I said to wait and see hoping it was a misunderstanding. The next day she called in ill. This left us very short staffed and put a lot of pressure on the rest of us. We were all really annoyed and the situation was escalated to management.

I thought this was the right decision at the time but now I'm not sure. What if she gets sacked when she returns from holiday- I would feel awful if tat happens. I assumed it would be a stern word but DH said this would be gross misconduct at his workplace and they would be gone the same day. I really couldn't have ignored her lie could I, not when it had such an impact on the rest of our team. Or should I have overlooked this bearing in mind that 80% of the time she's a good colleague.

If your jobshare being off has impacted to workloads then she could raise a grievance against you (it is what a union would recommend) for not managing your jobshare appropriately.

Why on earth would you as a line manager make things worse for yourself?

She didn’t care about stitching her colleagues up with work. Who does she think she is to take more leave than what’s booked? It’s a conduct issue. I wouldn’t say sackable but worth of a warning. Who wants a dishonest employee?

So a contingency plan has not been put in place to account for your job share's work while on long term sick, meaning everyone's jobs have become harder? I would say that's your problem OP. Maybe this person has had enough and has started working to contract, and has decided that as she's not being valued, she's going to stop caring?

You did the right thing. Noe stop worrying about it.
You did manage the situation. She cannot just lie like this and you cannot ignore what she had told the other colleague.
The consequences will be the consequences of her own actions.

The issue here is the lying to for extra holiday.
Does she have to provide a Dr certificate?

We all had fairly recent 1:1s and she gave and was given positive feedback then. So i think overall she is/was happy enough in her job. It is since that time her performance has worsened. There have been odd issues before but more frequent in the last month - like she can't be arsed at times. I have tried speaking to her from a place of concern but she has just told me that everything is fine.

In terms of my job share being off it hasn't meant anyone has had to increase hours, just needed to work a bit harder during those hours. There is a replacement for my job share but not always the same person and they dont know our department as well ascwe do obviously. I've shown a lot of appreciation towards my colleagues during this time- personal thanks, messages etc. Maybe she is fed up but then find another job and leave, don't lie to most of us about being ill ( she said she had d and v.)

I know really I couldn't have ignored it but I feel a bit crap about it all. I'm also concerned about what it will be like when she comes back- I hope she isn't shitty with my other colleague for telling me about the lie.

Phoning in sick when you’re not sick is not working to contract.

OP, you did the right thing. Don’t second-guess yourself.

@AuntieJoyce I didn't mean that calling in sick when not sick is working to contact, I meant that the OP seems to expect the rest of the team to pick up the slack for her colleague being on long term sick, says this colleague works well 80% of the time (I'm assuming the other 20% is related to her not being prepared to do someone else's work for free). So I can imagine this has caused a lot of bad feeling leading to no longer caring or being exhausted and calling in sick for extra time off.

The root issue is the other colleague on long term sick and a lack of contingency in my opinion.

As long as you’re not working additional hours, you’re not doing someone else’s work for free. I can’t get my head around this sort of attitude, sorry

@AuntieJoyce

It is doing additional work for free when that work is the work of someone who is responsible for line managing you. Would you really be prepared to do your line manager's work while they are on long term sick without getting any uplift in your pay? I certainly wouldn't.

I’m not sure what else you could do? How would it look to the colleague who told you if you’d turned a blind eye? Possibly a complaint to your manager about favouritism, letting other colleagues break rules etc. You did the right thing. If someone is going to pull something like this they are very stupid to tell a colleague! She must think she’s invincible/doesn’t care a jot if she is disciplined.

How would you prove/back this up though?

All the employee has to do is claim that she is being stitched up by the colleague who claims she had heard her say that she would be calling in sick.

You can self-certify for up to seven days so she does not need a GP note either.

So it would be very difficult to prove she was not sick and lied.

All you can do is scrutinise her performance instead, basically something you can evidence, if you think she is not pulling her weight at work.

Also on a separate note, you can't expect your team to pick up the slack for your jobshare partner long-term and this needs to be addressed too.

My feeling is that the employee will make a complaint against you for the allegation you made about her when she comes back.

It's difficult to put all the details in without either making posts way too long or outing myself.

She's definitely on holiday though and booked a Wednesday to Wednesday months ago before my job share was off sick. The colleague she told knew about this and advised her to change her holiday dates asap at the time. She just assumed she had done this until she was told about the fake sickness to get the extra days.

I the points about my job share being off and how it might affect my team but I don't think this holiday is about that.

It has made me think about how my job shares absence might be affecting everyone though so I will raise it with management. Like I said before we do get someone in but it's not always the same person and it's not the same as having someone who really knows the department. Ideally the management need to appoint someone short term rather than carry on ad hoc.

I would, yes, as it’s an opportunity to demonstrate that I’m able to move up to the next level. That’s how I’ve always rolled through my working career and now I’ve got to a senior position. I’m always amazed on here how everybody works to rule.

There was a recent thread where women in their 50s were saying they were sick of the working life and they just did the bare minimum. I couldn’t identify with that at all. I can’t imagine working the next 10 years not motivated.

@AuntieJoyce some points below.

That sort of reasoning is why wages continue to stagnate. Companies keep dangling imaginary promotions in front of employees to try and incentivise them to do additional work for free. Leading to that work and those skills becoming less valued and valuable over time.

Not everyone wants to progress. If everyone became a manager there would be no one left to actually manage. What happens to those individuals who do not want to climb the greasy pole-can they refuse to do additional work for the imaginary promotions?

What is wrong with being motivated to do the job you are currently doing and doing well without constantly being expected to go above and beyond for an organisation that would literally replace you in a heartbeat?

If all jobs were valued the same they would all be paid the same. Should an administrator be expected to take on the work of a senior manager for an administrator's pay as long as they are still only doing a standard work day? If yes, then why was the senior manager being paid more in the first place?

I am actually glad that more and more people are waking up to this nonsense and valuing their time and their skills more than this. If everyone worked to contract then wages would rise and companies would be held to account. Which would lead to more tax being paid, less UC etc being paid and society being much better off.

In the case of the OP: if this is the first time this employee has pulled something like this then I would bet it's because of the current working conditions. They are the root cause, and are not only leading to her staff being expected to do work above their pay grade for free, but also leading to her staff now starting to complain about each other and lying to management. I know what I would focus on, as I'll bet my money that if the root cause isn't fixed this will not be the last staff member that the OP will need to "escalate to management" based on, at this point, hearsay.

Lauren Oliver - are you a civil servant? Your attitude smacks of the unionised, anti capitalist, awkward squad.

@Teentaxidriver firstly, those are some crazy generalisations you have made there. And if refusing to be exploited makes me "unionised, anti-capitalist and awkward" then great.

As it stands, no, I'm not a civil servant. I have worked in both the private and public sectors, and am in management. What I do have the ability to do, however, is to understand that not everybody has the same motivations in their careers as I do, and I have the confidence in myself to make sure that I do not do a company's dirty work for it, which includes exploiting staff or making management decisions based upon, at this stage, unproven gossip.

It's got nothing to do with the job share being off. You can't just lie and go on holiday because you've been working hard. Don't be ridiculous!

If she felt over worked and unhappy there are proper channels to go through you can't just go off on holiday and lie about it.

Of course it's unproven at this stage and sure it will be investigated, that goes without saying. But there are no mitigating factors.

Sure it will be fairly easy to establish if she is on holiday or at home unwell.

You did the right thing. If staff are concerned about workloads, then they should raise it with their line manager. She knows that what she has done is wrong.

The job share being off is a red herring.

An employee is calling in sick when they are actually on holiday is the problem!!

If you don't do anything the other employee who told you will be so pissed off and disillusioned. It could create a really bad atmosphere in the office.

You need to talk to HR and show the proof of you have any.

There was no choice but to escalate this OP, you simply could not have turned a blind eye just imagine how this would impact the rest of the team. It would reflect badly on you as their line manager not to have addressed someone on holiday calling in sick. There are always people who will take advantage to suit themselves with no regard for others.

You need to escalate it.

Funny story, though-many years ago, I knew someone who worked for a large dairy and workers lined up and collected their wages weekly. It was common for a person to ask how many annual leave days they had left, and how many sick days?!

I think you did the right thing in reporting this to management OP.

I also think you are right to use this as a trigger to summarise the impact the staff shortages is having on the team.

It sounds as though you have a group of dedicated team mates who want to do what's best for each other. One of the team would rather stick to their role without taking on extra workload. Which I can understand. Neither have the wrong approach, and neither should be mocked for how they are motivated to work. But its time that management addressed team morale and showed some appreciation for how people have stepped up.

In my job you can't go from sick to holidays. You either have to work a shift before your holiday starts or you don't get holiday pay.