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 am an employment lawyer and I’ve helped many employers over the years sack their employees for doing the same thing. It’s scarily common.

Total breach of trust, and I would treat it as gross misconduct unless the disciplinary policy said otherwise!

She lied for personal benefit, the rest is detail. Gross misconduct and a sackable offence.

At the end of the day she is a work colleague. Not a friend. So, I think you did the right thing at the time. If she gets sacked, it's her own actions which caused it.

I line managecstaff and 100% I would escalate this.
She lied and this is effectively fraud .

What have HR and your Line Manager said?

We had similar situation .. Although staff off sick … having a very jolly time on s. Media … though stupidly had management on there .

when they returned the disciplinary process was going to be followed .. however they had a tantrum people were cross with him so resigned…

You did the right thing Op . Getting away with this just causes issues and lack of respect for management

You have done the right thing by escalating the issue to the management level that will make the decisions. This is not on you but her.

She has made the error in telling (boasting) to someone else what she was doing. That staff member felt uncomfortable and reported to you. You felt uncomfortable too and did the correct thing by reporting too.

Leave management to deal with it

And it would be a complete waste of time targeting the person who is doing her job (and as much as possible of the absent colleague's) as an excuse for defrauding the company.

I've been in some pointless grievance meetings before now, but 'Oh, but my manager's too busy, so I'm complaining about her in revenge in the hope of deflecting away from my gross professional misconduct' is probably the most pointless waste of everybody's time I've heard of.

Did you actually read OP post?

Additionally even if she did mention it in the office about calling in sick, nobody will ever know if it was genuine. You can self certify for a week so she can just do that. It is something that can never be proved or dis proved, especially if her response is I had a stomach bug or a migraine or something.

@GoldEagle yes I did, what's your point?

Depends what kind of holiday it is. If she had flights booked for the day she was ‘sick’ that’d be proof. Don’t know if work can ask for that though.

I have already commented on this OP, but again:

• I can completely agree that if she did indeed lie about her sickness that she should be investigated
• nevertheless management will need to find proof. the word of a colleague is not enough as unfortunately there are also people who delight in gossiping/ causing problems for others
• people can self-certify for 7 days without a GP fit note so again management would need to prove that she faked it
• you need to address the fact that you have one staff member on long term sick leave and that this is causing issues for the team and their workload and affecting moral and behaviour.

This colleague lied about being sick so she can add extra days to her already booked time off, then she was foolish enough to tell another colleague what she was going to do. The OP did the right thing in escalating this issue up to management.

@GoldEagle how does the OP know if this person lied? All they have is the word of another colleague at this stage. If you are in management, would you usually simply take one person's word for something like this and talk about it in the office with no regard for privacy and escalate it further without having even spoken to the individual in question and in their absence?

It all seems very immature and knee-jerk to me. I'm not saying this individual hasn't done anything wrong, I am saying the handling of this has been incorrect.

The OP has explained she is a line manager, dealing with rotas ect, management with a small M. This colleague has not pulled her weight for some time and has been cut more than enough slack it seems to me.

@GoldEagle and this demonstrates the significant lack of management skills in this country. You cannot just call a colleague a liar in one context because you feel she hasn't pulled her weight in another context. And I would argue that it's not that the colleague is not pulling her weight, I would say that she's tired of picking up the slack.

You did the right thing. The colleague told you in advance she was intended to do this …and sure enough it happened. So unless she has a sixth sense or it’s a huge coincidence, it looks like she took time off sick when she wasn’t.

If she hadn’t told the colleague before hand and said she was sick on the day, there’s not much you could have done about it …unless you had additional proof she was off on her holiday at that time.

You had to deal with this, once it was reported to you …or you wouldn’t be doing YOUR job. It would send the wrong signals out to the team who are working hard and working harder because of her ‘sickness’

If there are wider issues at work then they should be reported and dealt with. It doesn’t justify someone putting in 3 days ‘sick’ to extend a holiday. That’s fraud.

Colleague broke the golden rule of never ever tell anyone at work about calling in sick, however close you are.