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.

YABU because you admit your annoyance is down to you having a dislike for him and his style. If he is a good performing employee then take the emotion out of it.

It’s just a day. Don’t be a micromanager for an employee that doesn’t need performance management.

I think relying on the senders of emails to have actually seen / read the OoO is a mistake. I often have emails in my inbox box when I get back to work which haven't been dealt with, due to the sender being an idiot and not reacting to the OoO.

After 4 weeks, I think a day is reasonable to clear the in box and then get going.

You could use this as an OOO email template.....

Hello

I'm OOO from X date to Y date. If you have an urgent query during this time please contact A or B who will be happy to help.

If you specifically require my help, please resend your email on Z date when I am back at work.

Any emails sent while I'm away will not be looked at upon my return.

Kind regards

That way it frees up the first day for you to catch up with any important updates first thing, and stops time wasting reading (potentially) hundreds of emails.

It also cuts down on emails that shouldn't have been sent in the first place.

This should be adopted when an individual is away from the business for a week or longer.

Sadly we have a culture where employees read work emails during annual leave, or (even worse) read them on a Sunday before returning to work on the Monday to ensure they have caught up.

If everybody from the top down adopted this, nobody could moan.

This sort of thing needs to be normalised and accepted. If there is going to be any chance of ever having ND individuals in the workforce more frequently then this sort of practice is vital and needs to be accepted by all. I know you haven’t said he is ND and he may be NT but it struck me as something small that people will complain about and made me think of the bigger struggles for those in the workplace with ND

Massively depends on his seniority, his role or functions and the dynamics of your industry. You must realise that! But yes I understand your frustration and also can’t cope with people who over play processes and routines and ‘how I do things’ to basically be inflexible, unresponsive and useless…!

All right, Wall Street.

Is first day won't be 'lost'. He is catching up with emails and what happened while he was away and what needs to be actioned next. That's work!

4 weeks away is a large chunk of time to be away so they will have a lot to catch up on.

You sound like a micro-manager who does not like this person much.

Take a step back.

Unless there is a back story and this employee has a track record of being difficult and not performing, you are the one with the issue here...

Depends how he will know what is resolved - guessing no one has access to his inbox to delete those things so it is still going to take time!

can you spend the first hour with him just going through email sorted by subject and deleting/filing all the stuff he doesn’t need to look at?

then he won’t need anywhere near as long to go through it

It depends.

In my job I still need to sift through emails and work out what I need to action and what I don't need to action.

Yes a lot of it can be ignored as it has be dealt with but I don't know unless i work through my emails.

Unless you are happy for him to delete every single item in his inbox and guarantee that he won't miss anything then you are being very unfair

I think him having time to catch up in fine however it shouldn't excuse him from attending meetings with you to bring him up to speed and attending other meetings.
I would compromise and say keep your head down in the morning going through emails but for the afternoon he needs to start attending meetings etc. but carrying on catching up around that.

Most emails should be skim read, because over 4 weeks a lot would have changed and it will be better value to catch up with people face to face then spend multiple hours on emails.

It is the Government, nothing will have happened whilst he was away.

I'd tell him to stick to the last fortnight's emails, and I'd catch him up at 11, save him the trouble then give him some tasks to do when I met up with him. The team can catch him up on anything else.

Also, being an ex manager, I'd request access to people's emails whilst they were away for a month, purely to get rid of gubbins for them and pick up anything important, and tell them to add that bit to their out of office. We would regularly do this as people really DID NOT want all the shit to wade through when they returned.

I came back from one week out few times and it took me nearly all day because more people than one would hope ignored OOO and deadlines were nearly missed! Or they went to others in the team but never ccd me so had to check if that was dealt with. I spent most of the day grumbling trying to find out what is happening.
Another times it took me an hour and tjat was it. Really depends on what is happening at the time.

Ha ha yes - so many people ignore Out of office and give you further information, wait for you to return etc
Was there an actual divert on your colleagues emails? Apologies if you have already said

Even if he does need a whole day (unlikely) surely it's not really up to him to decide this. And all emails don't have to be actioned on his first day back. They could be dealt with throughout the week

I always think an hour, two tops is enough to catch up on emails. And I have a creaking inbox with little that can be picked up in my absence.

Completely agree and understand your POV.

After filtering and sorting ot takes minutes NOT days. Can't bear self important busy work.

I had a customer whose out of office message said "I'm out of the office, when i get back I'm deleting any e-mails received, if it's important resend it after this date". I wish I was brave enough to do that but can't as it would be so much simpler. I do agree that a day is taking the piss.

In your job, maybe. I may have a non-dealt-with email which means I have to do something substantive, like draft an application to court or similar. Not something which takes a few minutes.

As long as he attends the meetings at 11am and 2pm surely he can manage the rest of the day as he sees fit? Unless you need him to complete some tasks and he's refusing?

I’d be absolutely mortified if my manager felt they had to go through my emails with me. I expect to be trusted to know what my job is and have ways to manage workflow. If I say need a day to clear my inbox after 4 weeks off to be clear about what needs dealt with or not I’d expect that to be accepted. He also has two meetings in his diary, it’s not all drinking coffee and leisurely reading.

There’s a level of micromanagement that’s totally unacceptable for professional adults.

she never said he would not answer calls, posters are just making that up. she also said he would attend a catchup with her and a team meeting that day.

i think op is being totally unreasonable, unless she is happy for him to ignore his inbox and if something important gets missed for op to take the blame. how is he supposed to know which emails are resolved and which are important unless he reads through them? and then he may need to take action as result of some of the emails which will take more time.

taking issue with him over-engineering his work is one thing, but fixating on one day he needs after 4 weeks off is silly.

Don't moan then if he stops having catch up time and then misses out on loads of crucial emails. No nagging him if he misses something. After all, you think he doesn't deserve catch up time.

Of course it's not unreasonable to need time to catch up. I was away for 5 days last month and that was bad enough. Hundreds of emails.

Are you his manager? Or just a colleague who watches on and gets irritated by him?

You're being unreasonable, a day to catch up after 4 weeks away isn't a huge ask, it's actually the responsible thing to do. He's making sure he's up to speed with what's been happening while he's away. Yes, some of it may be resolved already but that doesn't mean it isn't a good idea for him to be aware that's it's happened.
You clearly don't like him but you really need to put that aside to work with someone. Rushing someone into new projects when they may still have other things to finish isn't good management.

It really depends on the job. Some people will only need an hour others might need two days to catch up.

I personally wouldn't need that long because I usually have a good idea to what I'm coming back to. Not that much change, so I only need to be told if anything has happened or has been discussed that I need to be aware of.

My husband will need a day, especially after 4 weeks away. In his job things changes daily and even small changes he needs to be aware of. He also needs a very clear understanding of everything that is going on and has been discussed for when he speaks to clients.

My mother in law would probable need two days to catch up because she deals with a lot of information from very senior people and a lot of requests that she will have to double check if they have been followed through. She needs almost a day to catch up even after a week away.

I think as a PP has pointed out, can he just delete his inbox and start working? If so then just a meeting is fine and maybe forward his a few things he needs to be aware of. If not then think of it this way, on average people spend 2 hours per work day on emails. Let's say half of that is reading and half replying. Then he has 1 hour of reading per day to catch up on. So that is 20 hours of email reading. He already has 2 meeting scheduled for Monday, That's rougly 2 hours of his day gone . So fitting 20 hours or reading in 6 hours seems very reasonable to me.

Hi Brian, I understand you will need some time to review your emails but as everything urgent and important has been dealt with, a couple of hours should suffice, once you have spent that time can you deal with - Task 1 & 2 and update ne after lunch. You are the manager, he needs managing