Am I being unfair about an employee needing a catch-up day?

[StartupRepair]

I have a member of my team who seems to make a huge production out of this. He announces that he will spend his first day back reading and catching up on his email..While away he has an out of office on and anything urgent or important comes to me or other team members so there should be nothing serious in his inbox. Just updates. I find it really annoying and don't know if it is just a low level irritation that I have with him. I do find him a bit pompous and he tends to over engineer a lot of work.
I am a fast reader and can skim lots of emails in a short time and identify what is important. But maybe it is unfair to judge him as he has different skills.
He is returning on Monday after 4 weeks leave and I already a bit annoyed that his first day back will be kind of lost.
Open to opinions on whether I am an unfair manager to judge this.

YAU. What is the role? Does he manage a case load? Need to update any training? Book anything in? Respond to missed phone calls/team messages? Is it only emails? However some emails still arrive individually even if ooo on. Absolutely loads to sort after leave if so. Don’t stress him out, appreciate all employees (yourself included) would benefit mentally from one catch up day after return to work after a month off.

Why did you approve 4 weeks leave? That’s too long surely?

If an employee requests a month, many employers say yes unless willing to lose them - and recruitment usually results in a bigger gap.

People rarely request it as they don't have enough paid holiday, it's usually a big thing like visiting Australia, a honeymoon, a big family thing.

If people request unpaid leave that's different but again a lot of workplaces say yes. It's expensive and disruptive to lose experienced staff.

YABU, I would expect anyone who takes 2 or more weeks off to spend their first day back getting up to speed. That would be the norm where I work and people would know not to bother them on the first day back unless it really couldn't wait.

In our sector (government) in Australia, 4 weeks leave is not seen as unreasonable if the employee has the leave accumulated. I think it is really good for someone to take a significant break, get right away from work.Helps us all maintain energy for our careers.
He's back on Monday.
I'd like him to start at least looking at a couple of things that are coming up for us, rather than get bogged down reading long email chains about something that was resolved 2 weeks ago.
I'm trying to separate out my private impatience at his occasional self importance from what is reasonable for him to do. He will start at 9. I have half an hour with him at 11 and we have our usual team meeting at 2. I would hope he feels sufficiently caught up after that.

I don’t think you’re BU. A couple of hours to get organised is sufficient, if he’s sifting in a time efficient way. Sounds like he wants to put his feet up and coast through it metaphorically speaking.

Four weeks off is a lot, there’s a lot of emails even after one or two weeks off so to have the first day back to go through things after four weeks is completely reasonable, I’d be doing exactly the same.

Seems very fair to have one day to catch up after four weeks off!!!

It's difficult to say and I'm sure whether you're unreasonable or not depends on other posters own workplace experiences which may be very different from what your reality is.

For eg in my role, although we have a similar set up and clients are given an alternative to email in my absence, if it's non urgent they often don't, and even if it is it's often something I need to be aware of or may need to follow up on my return. In a month's period it could be potentially 200 plus different clients emailing me so it's certainly not a 15 minute teams call to bring me up to speed.

It's definitely a full day sorting and sifting when I get back in after a fortnight off for me, and that's usually after going through and deleting any bumf/adminny/cc'd in for no apparent reason ones the night before.

However, of course that doesn't mean that in his position he's perfectly reasonable - as your work is probably totally different and I presume other team members don't need this time to catch up when back from leave?

If it's genuinely unnecessary have a word. 'Everything has been dealt with whilst you were away, so you can crack on with XYZ'.

You are totally unreasonable. I would expect
after 4 weeks off to have a day to catch up, emails, speak to people and generally get back in a work mindset. If you can’t afford him that, I wouldn’t want to work for you.

Sounds like both of you are partly unreasonable, but him more than you.

It's true that any time off, especially 4 weeks is going to lead to a big email backlog. However you say that OOO should have taken care of any significant work requests? He can also do things like inbox clean up to avoid reading the same email chain multiple times.

So he should certainly have broken the back of it by the time you talk at 11 and have a plan for what jobs he needs to do over the next few days. And having this sort of deadline helps to rein in 'work expands to fill the time allowed' element ie if he says it will take a day, he will let it take a day even if it could be reasonably done in 2 hours.

But I get the feeling he's one of those who makes a big performance about being busy/overloaded that doesn't play out in terms of work delivered or objective measures of his workload?

I suggest having a call/meeting with him first thing, catching him up with various things he was working on, and giving him a steer on what his priorities should be this week, then at least he can then disregard a number of the emails as they will be no longer relevant.

I would try to discourage the team from ccing people into emails while they are away and delegation by cc unless you want them to spend a day reading into them when they return from leave. Instead, key emails should be saved into shared project folders/sites etc to be referred to if necessary and anything urgent should be a conversation followed by an email sent with more information. The more you expect people to glean from emails the more they will miss it altogether.

I couldn't for one second imagine not giving my teams a day to properly catch up after 2 weeks leave, let alone 4.
In fact, I would encourage it.

So surprising to me the amount of people who think you can catch up on 4 weeks worth of emails in a couple of hours.

I understand different expectations/workloads for different jobs/ sectors. But I do think it sounds like the fact that he annoys you is clouding this for you.

Would you be comfortable if he deleted all the emails he received whilst on leave? If so you could ask him to do that. If not, he’s got to read them, hasn’t he?

Also people who make a show of being busy/overloaded are sometimes just trying to maintain healthy boundaries from becoming overloaded with work and burned out, because that's what employers do to people who are at first efficient, intelligent and on top of their work. If you get through a lot, quickly you are only rewarded with more work and become overloaded.

It's not always about the number of tasks someone has to do but the headspace to manage it. We aren't robots or AI.

Inhouse emails regarding training, changes to procedures or information fine but other emails that have been dealt with not so much.

I work part time and unless I do overtime I don't have the option to take time out to watch training links in my normal day.

I’m off three days this week. I will need at least one day next week as a catch up day to deal with emails and the amount of stuff on my desk.

I would hate to be in the jobs of job where my manager micromanages my day to day tasks. We are not at school

I used to have a manager who threw us straight back into work and expected us to simultaneously address emails, work that was still open and attend meetings first day back. Everyone dreaded holidays, talking before the holidays about how they’d cope after!!

Impossible to say. absolutely would not need a day for my job, the team leader might need longer.
Does he get his work done and at the standard required? If he does then it seems to be his manner you object to and Yabu regarding the day as it seems to work.

Well it’s hard to comment without knowing what his job entails. DH is a Director, he keeps on top of his emails all holiday and takes calls throughout. He simply couldn’t shut the laptop lid and go away, he would come back to carnage.

If the chap is in a low level admin type role in local government and his emails are picked up by others on the team in his absence with no direct ownership of specific complex projects then he’s probably taking the piss.

You are his manager and probably know he doesn’t have anything to catch up on if you’re raising this.

It kind of depends on your sector and role i suppose. If it is possible to take the time, why wouldn’t you to make sure you’re on solid ground?

I think it really depends on your company and the role. If I had four weeks off, I would have hundreds of emails to read, and whilst i do put alternative contacts in my OoO I would never not still read the emails assuming things had been sorted in case they hadn't and something got missed! Plus there would be a fair amount of company news I'd want to get caught up on and out of the way in terms of new processes and tools that seem to be constantly issued for the two functional roles I have. I would aim to alao have some catch up calls as well as read emails, but I'd definitely expect a day of catching up with things to be honest!

Depending on how many emails he’s got, it does sound a bit excessive. I usually take a couple of hours to catch up and respond to emails after 2 weeks off, if everything urgent had been resolved in my absence and I’m just checking or getting up to speed. So I’d expect after 4 weeks to need about half a day to do all that.

But I am also a fast reader and can skim through lots of emails quickly. I appreciate some people are a lot slower and will need more time. But he does sound a bit annoying with the huge announcements to the team, and it would make me think that he’s trying to make himself look busy to avoid any difficult tasks on his first day back.

That would be taking the piss where I work and would result in words from your manager, at best. The duty manager would also look very dimly at it and would give you something to do with a tight deadline. It would also count against you under productivity targets, as you are clearly not producing any measurable work at that time.