In a
recent poll we asked employers if they thought workplace absence would increase
during the UK’s ‘Summer of Sport’ and whether they had a plan in place to deal
with this. We can now reveal that 42% of respondents expected workplace absence
to increase during the summer due to the Olympics and Euro 2012. Of these
respondents, a further 47% said they didn’t have a plan to deal with
unauthorised absences. British employers now need to get to grips with managing
all those employees who come knocking on the door asking to leave early to
watch the match.
In a
previous blog post we criticised creating a policy for the sake of
creating a policy. Employers should use existing policies and procedures for
dealing with holiday requests, unauthorised absence and so on. It would be
useful to have an IT/social media policy which would prohibit employees
misusing the internet to live stream the games while they are meant to be
working.
Employers
should absolutely not accuse their employees of pulling a ‘sickie’ without
reasonable evidence (seeing one of your ‘sick’ employees appear in TV coverage
would be evidence enough!).
Here
are our top 3 excuses from employees and what employers might interpret them
as:
Employee:
[Monday morning] I can’t come into work today as I have come down with food
poisoning.
Employer:
Probably too much alcohol rather than bad prawns!
Employee:
[Friday] My child is unwell and there’s no one else to look after them
Employer:
Looks like they want a head start to their weekend
Employee:
I have to go to my Gran’s funeral
Employer:
Again? How many grandmothers can one person have?
If you
would like more information or would like further help, contact The HR Dept
