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.

As a business owner I would find this excessive. If all important emails have already been picked up present staff then his inbox should be minor fluff to fly through.

This is really him acclimatising back in to work and easing himself back in whilst other staff members pick up the slack - which causes resentment.

Will he still be picking up calls or is he still expecting them to be fielded? Or is he essentially ‘still out of office’?

Unless the emails all contain detailed reports etc I wouldn’t need a whole day to go through them. And now we have tools such as Copilot built in to help prioritise emails, even less so.
He isn’t operating as efficiently as he could.

My first thought as well. While someone else might have dealt with them, as he takes back on his role will there be an expectation that he acts as though he knows what is in those emails or can he ignore them entirely? If he needs to know them to do his job well, then he needs to read them. Your catch up may miss something important.

Has he got to catch up on his whole workload for the four weeks off or has tbat been covered and it’s just general mails he needs to look at?

Unless your holiday arrangements are that everything that comes in gets deleted when a person returns, then some catch up and sorting time seems reasonable.

A day after four weeks is two hours a week. I’m pretty confident you spend more than two hours a week reading and sorting emails. As a manager, you should also have better executive decision making skills than your team members so it’s reasonable to expect them to be slower.

Personally I’d see it as sensible planning which should prevent any ‘Im behind, I need to catch up’ issues going past that first day.

YABU

Four weeks off would definitely leave me wanting a catch up day. I mark out two hours off to catch up after one week off, so the maths works. Plus he has meetings he will be attending during that first day you say?

You just don’t like him do you? 😆

OP has said that his work was covered by others

It depends on his job. I note you say you work in government in Australia. I work in government in the UK. I had two weeks off and came back to over 500 emails. Some of them could easily be deleted (daily bulletins etc) but that only cleared about 50 odd emails. I’m a senior manager, so get cc’d into a lot of emails. I then need to check the enquiry has been dealt with sufficiently/catch up on it.

One day to catch up isn’t unreasonable. I’ve only just caught up with all the backlog plus all the new things coming in since I’ve been back (it never stops). It’s very stressful being overwhelmed by emails, tasks and people wanting to “brief” you. The weeks leading up to my holiday are stressful (trying to get everything done and handing things over) and then returning and catching up is just as stressful! I’d give him the day, but expect him to put them on hold if something urgent cropped up.

Not unreasonable after 4wks. I doubt it would take all day though, 2hrs tops.

I think most people spend a day catching up one way or another, it sounds like he just makes more of a production of it and announces it and that feeds into the general irritation you already have with him. But meeting him to catch him up and setting some new plans for him in place sounds reasonable and he can spend the rest of the day pontificating about catching up.

I have been on mumsnet for well over a decade and this is the first post I have reported. Aggressive and unhelpful

“If all important emails have already been picked up present staff then his inbox should be minor fluff to fly through.
This is really him acclimatising back in to work and easing himself back in whilst other staff members pick up the slack - which causes resentment.
Will he still be picking up calls or is he still expecting them to be fielded? Or is he essentially ‘still out of office’?”

For me, it’s this. Is he still essentially out of office?

Does he have (and know how to use) Copilot? It sounds like he may need some training to update his methods for catching up, as well as some guidance as to what it is acceptable to ignore.

I do think that it is a bit odd, though, that you could do without him for 4 weeks yet you are worried about the impact of one slow day. The only exception might be eg if there was a project meeting on day 1 and he refused to attend as too busy catching up.

Tell him no, give him a couple of hours and then tell him to get on with his tasks after that.

Why don’t you introduce a system where you monitor each other’s emails and delete irrelevant/ dealt with emails for each other?

you know the ones wheee you’re cc’d in and then part of a lenthy chain that doesn’t concern you?

We have a blanket phased return policy in our department after 4 weeks off.! You sound like a nightmare boss!

I really would, while the work/task
may have been taken care of, I still need know what’s happened and be aware of gaps I might need to fill, I wouldn’t be relying on AI to work out what’s important to follow up on. Much of my work has one project feed into another, so knowing X has been taken care of is fine but I then need to know how it fits with Y or Z.

Even if everything has been dealt with, he needs to know what has arisen in his absence. After 4 weeks, half is day is probably ok unless any mandatory training has come up.

What's his job? I had 3 weeks off in July and it took me a good couple of weeks to feel I was properly caught up. I would have love the luxury of shutting myself a way for a day (or 2). It does depend on the job though. I didn't have work building up but I had to understand the progress and decisions made while I was away, read all the documents sent out, catch up on the wider organisation news, and ensure I understood all my priorities. If you work somewhere where once an email is dealt with no one else has ot know what it said, it would be much quicker.

Glad I don’t work for you 🤦‍♀️😂

It depends how many emails you get and what proportion still need to be dealt with, but I'd say that's perfectly reasonable after four weeks. For me that would be a hell of a lot of emails, even with someone covering there would be hundreds. You can't physically read and delete that much volume quickly, and it's horrible to feel you'll never catch up because work starts up again as soon as you're back.

Company culture where I am is to leave your OOO on but say something like 'Just back from holiday and clearing emails, bear with me'.

Overdoing work is a different matter and needs addressing separately. Work with him on what he doesn't need to do.

Depends on the role. I’d need a couple hours to get through training and emails- but I’d probably only have 100. My husband gets 100 a day so I should think a day is reasonable.

I’m trying to imagine a world where a) I felt the need to announce that I was catching up on emails after a 4 week absence b) my manager was such a micromanager they felt they had a say in what I did. It all sounds awful.

Agree with PP, if you’re so sure none of the emails are relevant, tell him to file / delete them. Otherwise let him have the day to read them. It’s not even the whole day, you’ve said he has a 1-1 with you and a team meeting as well. FWIW I would come back to 1k emails in that scenario. There may not be many to action but I’d absolutely skim them all, and I would expect to be able to have the bulk of the first day to do that.

I think you are focusing on the wrong thing here. A day to catch up after 4 weeks off is not the end of the world.

Your irritation is really about this “he tends to over engineer a lot of work.” so you’d be better off thinking about how to tackle that!

I presume while he has been off, someone else has been managing to cover off his work in half the time it normally takes him, so now you should have more than enough evidence to tell him to get his finger out; or let you know if he needs training on something to improve his productivity to a reasonable standard.

You don't like him or his style of working, but is he a good worker? Does he do good work? If so then you should let him do it his own way as far as possible. I too am a very fast reader and processor, and I know I can't expect everyone else to match that speed. Solidity of work, quality of output, and depth and thoroughness of reflection are important too. Speed is not the only metric.