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.

I think these are two separate issues.

You did the right thing escalating it to management you would have caused huge resentments in your team if you had turned a blind eye and she wouldn’t be the only one pulling that trick if she blatantly got away with it.

In our company you get your holidays back if you are sick too.

in terms of your job share, is the situation likely to continue for some time? I think a more reliable replacement than ad hoc temps is called for here.

That doesn't seem like it's very legal to be honest, I'm not sure that employers can refuse paid holidays in those circumstances. What if the employee has an injury that meant they simply couldn't work?

You did exactly right. She's caused you and your other hard working team a whole load of trouble, if she gets sacked then so be it, she can't expect you and yours to work even harder because she can't be arsed to come in!

I think everyone is overlooking the fact that this was all preplanned.

She readily shared she would be ringing in sick simply to extend a prebooked holiday period

Why she would share this information and not expect consequences, I don't know!

I think you're being unreasonable.

The issue here is the lack of staff due to long sick - NOT this colleague.

Yes what she did was wrong BUT life is too short. You could do the same.

Pretty sure they'll have to give her a warning first - depends on what's in the handbook really.

Self certify for the first week.

I'd contact CAB not entirely sure it's legal 😬

What if she gets sacked when she returns from holiday

To be honest, she deserves a formal written warning at the very least. In most workplaces, this would be considered to be gross misconduct and sackable.

You dud the right thing. If others see her getting away with this it will seriously affect morale and they may all start trying it.

I agree. And the fact that the OP says this colleague taking the extra days has put everyone else under lots of pressure and caused so much bad feeling is telling.

Why was her being off (and potentially lying about it) being spoken about in the office? Does she not have a right to privacy? Why does one person being off put so much pressure on everyone else?

It sounds like the organisation is suffering from understaffing, low morale and a culture of gossip. And again, it's important to note that the OP has not even spoken to the colleague yet-this has all been relayed via gossip at this stage.

Sorry @rebus1 but I don't think you handled this in the best way. There was a middle way between ignoring it and going to HR.

As her line manager, it would have been more appropriate to wait until she returned to work and tackled her about it, before deciding it needed to go to HR. Given her a chance to comment on it - maybe just make her take the extra days off as Annual Leave and make it crystal clear that it can never happen again.

Of course depending on her reaction and what she says, you could have decided to escalate to HR anyway but then you would have been able to tell her that was what you were going to do?

It's what I would have done and indeed have done in similar circumstances in the past. As a line manager you ARE management, albeit on a low rung and you abdicated all responsibility by going straight to HR

This is almost certainly illegal. There's no way that makes sense in line with employee rights. Happening to get sick before booked holiday means you lose your holiday pay? What?

I agree with this. I’d actually be concerned if a staff member who is usually very good developed performance issues (when I also know they have had increasing expectations placed on them due to someone else being on long term sick and that they also have home problems too). And now calling in sick when not actually sick. One person being absent having such an impact on the staff working that day does not sound good. Sounds like there are wider issues to address or the sickness absences ( probably put down as stress) will keep coming.

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I get your point @Silvers11 but I would not be able to do that. I have no authority at all in my role to tackle absences or much else to be honest! It's hard to explain without going into lots of very specific detail about my job but any kind of issues like that have to be dealt with my manager who manages us both, I am more like her supervisor really but without much authority!

If she's been there for 2 years or more she's going to be very difficult to fire without them worrying about potential legal action so will likely just get a written warning.

If she's been there for less than that they may boot her depending on how they feel. It will likely be because of other reasons not just this if they do, so I wouldn't blame yourself.

@rebus1 My apologies. For some reason I got it in my head that you had gone directly to HR, but I see you said you escalated to management.

Line management or supervisory roles, do normally include tackling poor performance/attendance issues, in the first instance, and you also said that you had to be seen to do something so that also implied that you were the first port of call. I appreciate you are not wanting to out yourself, so some details may have been changed

If you have no authority on things like this, then you did exactly the right thing passing the info to your line manager and letting them deal with it. TBH they may not do much about it other than speak to her. It's all hearsay at the end of the day and you will be unlikely to find out what happens unless they sack her

She is committing fraud. She deserves the consequences. Its akin to stealing.

My first thought would have been wait until her return and explore this with her. Was it that she'd already booked the holiday and got declined those leave days because it was short staffed? In which case why should she be penalised for organisational staffing issues. Was she just absolutely exhausted and couldn't take anymore? What circumstances led her to doing what she did? As most people don't just doing something for no reasons, there's normally a reason or thought process behind it.
Totally understand the impact on others, but if you hadn't known she was going away, she would have just been sick. You can't punish someone for being sick.
It also sounds like you have a very negative approach to her, about the lack of work she is doing. This could be perceived as workplace bullying. Not everything takes on the same amount and level of work as someone else, because we are all different. As someone who supervises staff, I would really expect you to understand this.

@Silvers11 no worries. It is tricky to be completely clear without outing myself.

I am expected to tackle underperformance to a certain extent, which I have in this person's case with a few issues but have tried to do it from a place of concern as she has some personal issues going on as well. At our workplace if a gentle word/reminder doesn't do the trick management then get involved. I don't have anything to do with performance beyond that and nothing at all to do with attendance.

I hope she doesn't get sacked because the majority of the time she works well but it's out of my hands now. She has brought this on herself which is real shame. If I hadn't reported it, it would have caused bad feeling among the other staff and I may well have ended up in trouble myself.

Is she on Social Media @rebus1

id be stalking the crap out of her socials and accidentally leaving my phone on managers desk if she’s been so idiotic as to post any holiday images

My previous employer would do this too. Instead of holiday it would go down as sick, but the holiday would go back on your allowance. Doesn't sound too bad until you find out how tight holiday space was! Another reason I'm glad I left 😅

I've knocked three years off my mortgage by passing on my boss' appreciation to my bank....

@mrsdineen2 same here-I eat steak every day with the thanks I get from my job.

And I wonder what aspect of her job this woman can't be "arsed with" sometimes? Would it be the extra management work she is expected to do without management pay?

And saying that if she's not happy she should just leave is telling. Would the OP really rather lose a decent employee who appears to be struggling as a result of a lack of effective management than actually escalate the fundamental issue of not enough staff and fix that instead?

Shocked at people thinking lying colleague should be allowed to get away with it!

The issue with job share being off sick isn't ideal, but this isn't OPs problem either really - she doesn't manage her job share. Job shares manager should be ensuring that there is adequate cover.

OP you did the right thing in escalating to management. They can investigate whether or not its gossip, but either way you could not allow this to slide otherwise why shouldn't everyone take a few sick days.

I'm all for employees protecting their rights, but if employees are blatantly in breach of contract they deserve to be treated in line with the businesses disciplinary processes, otherwise it makes a mockery out of everyone who does fulfil their contractual obligations