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.

This EXACT situation just happened to my colleague.

Gov department (uk) came back from 2 months off, term time contract, and her manager refused to let her catch up on any emails or updates.

She was told to go straight into a public facing role immediately.

She asked them for an hour to catch up on all her emails, policy changes, procedural updates (there's always loads in gov roles) memos, intranet etc and was told to get on with it and she would be fine.

She told me she started to take calls and made mistake after mistake. Had people angry as they were calling regarding important issues she had missed out on and she didn't know how to help them. by lunchtime, she was in tears at her desk and had to go home.

What kind of manager would think this is okay?

Of course an employee needs time to re-integrate. After a period of leave. Especially in a government role where updates come through almost daily.

You sound just as bad as her manager. I don't know how she puts up with it all. Don't be surprised if you end up with a bunch of complaints from frustrated clients.

This

Also in Australia and completely disagree. Half a day should be heaps of time

It depends entirely on the job and the emails, whether in Australia or any other country!

I think a whole day is fine after two weeks off tbh.

I know someone who blocks out half of Monday to catch up from having Friday off (and they work compressed hours, so full time in four days anyway).

A whole day is completely ridiculous and would easily be a disciplinary matter where I work. I was off work for three months due to ill health, and reading/deleting emails, installing new software, double-checking new processes and getting up to date on projects took less than two hours. But we do have a company-wide policy to keep emails to the essential and necessary only.

Maybe he's one of those people who reply to their emails?

Sounds perfectly normal to me OP, even after a shorter leave period, and especially after four weeks off!
There are a couple of digs in your post about him there - like saying how fast you get through your emails but he has different skills you suppose. Do you like your team member or am I sensing tension there from you towards him? 🤔

I kinda got that impression…😬

Exactly this!

i’d just leave him off on the his first day back, if he usually works hard and works well I would just accept that he is different to you and needs a day to gather himself and do a to do list.

I have a colleague who has a week off to catch up, despite me doing her work in her absence.