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.

No, I don't. I catch up whilst working on current stuff. But that still doesn't mean I can draft an application (or similar) in a matter of minutes, meaning it's not possible to catch up in the amount of time you claimed that it's possible to catch up in.

Further edit: quite often actions in litigation are urgent, so there is no luxury of scheduling it for the days / weeks after.

4 weeks is a lot of emails I would assume to catch up on. So in this instance I do feel you’re unreasonable, he should be able to clear his inbox. Even with 2 weeks off, the first day back is normally a bugger, as the work comes in as you’re reading emails. It’s not like the emails stop as you catch up

Howver as a manager, I think I’d say to him, I need you caught up by the 2pm meeting then to start on x y or z.

He is not a skiver. He is very conscientious but not strategic.

Surely even reading the emails that have been resolved is important too so he knows what’s gone on.

the fact he has had to say to you he needs this boundary does indicate that your own management style isn’t great - sorry!

Yeah you’re being unfair. I went back to work this week after a week and a half off and it’s hard to catch up on everything in emails and Teams, especially when you’re pulled into meetings and other conversations before you’ve gone through everything. After four weeks off, I would definitely want a day to catch up, even if urgent things had gone to other colleagues.

YABU. And petty IMO.

Unless you have real problems with his work, then while he's said "a whole day" he's probably just setting expectations and will pick up throughout the day.
Set some standards in your team meeting to set up AI Agents to read through your inbox and pick out the resolved items.

He's been away for a month. How critical is it that he is immediately available for new stuff coming in?

How can you 'give your team autonomy in how and when they do their work' then say you don't want him to take a day to catch up and you want him to start working on a couple of things?

It completely contradicts itself.

Of course it is.

He seems like one of these people who is busy doing nothing.

I look over from one of these and it turned out that my job only took 2 days a week (he was working 5 days) and I was able to get rid of one member of staff and automate her role.

It varies so much. People need to not copy colleagues in if it's going to be resolved while they're away and send a short summary of what they've covered.

Reading emails then setting up priorities shouldn't take all day.

Why is it not efficient? Takes me seconds to delete the things I don't need. Manager will have dealt with anything urgent. I still need to file them and read the information. Also, you have absolutely no idea what my job is or what other tasks I might have, so how you can make such a sweeping assessment is beyond me.

I used to have a colleague who would return from leave then start at the bottom of her emails and work her way up. Now that was bizarre as obviously she was reading email chains backwards and not seeing what had already been dealt with. I don't do it in such an inefficient way.

Tell him he’ll have from 9 - 12. If you’re a
manager then manage him. I had a colleague who asked for an hour off once to read a fact sheet. I gave them 15 minutes and told them if they still had any questions after that let me know and I’ll consider if any more time is needed.

Is that code for “ he is inefficient”?

I don’t know how these people get on in their jobs, but you say it’s public sector so maybe that’s the answer

Giving people autonomy has to have limits. You have to say that it’s too long and ask him how he structures his work. Have you not spoken to him about what you call “ over engineering”? Or is the public sector culture like in the UK?

I’m also in Aus, so very used to reports taking 4-6 weeks off. Completely reasonable for them to take the whole day on return to catch up with mail, what’s been going on, announcements, mandatory training via due dates (which can be immediate if taken 4/6 weeks). You are being a prize dick and crap manager.

If you're his boss, tell him politely you don't require him to spend the whole day doing that. And give him some actual specific tasks that need to be finished that day instead.

Otherwise he might just continue to do it (basically not doing any work) but not announce it as such.

tbh most of those emails will be automatic notifications that he can delete without reading.

he could use AI to summarise the remaining emails.

those 2 actions take 10 minutes.

I have a catch up with my team every morning and would expect him to be there.
2 hours, possibly 3 would be acceptable for catching up.

I'm not a slave driver, but I do have a tight budget and fixed deadlines.