We’ve had a spate of enquiries this month about dealing with an employee who keeps taking time off to look after their child. Short term, no notice absenteeism is a really difficult issue for employers to cope with. It affects planned work, it affects other team members and it can affect customers. It can be very frustrating especially if it happens a lot.
Does your employee keep taking time off to look after their child? Call 01706 565332 and arrange your FREE call and find out how Metis HR can help.
It’s important to remember that your employee has a contract of employment with you. That contract of employment says how many hours a week that they are contracted to attend work. There’s an obligation on both sides here. You as the employer need to provide the hours of paid work that you’ve contracted with your employee. Your employee needs to attend work for the hours that they’ve signed to do, unless they’ve agreed to take annual leave or in some other way agreed to a change. An employee who frequently fails to be available to carry out their contracted hours can be accused of “frustrating” the contract of employment.
Frustration of contract can lead employers to a decision to terminate the employment relationship. This kind of decision needs care.
The law
Parental Leave
Parental leave can be used by parents to spend more time with their young families. It’s not leave that’s designed for emergency use. Parental Leave is planned. It can only be used in blocks of one week at a time (unless the employee’s child has a disability). It is unpaid and is a maximum of 18 weeks until the child turns 18. You cannot unreasonably refuse an employee parental leave. We’ve seen Parental Leave applications where an employee’s child minder is away on holiday in the summer and the employee has no other child care. There’s more about Parental Leave here.
Emergency Leave
Emergency Leave is for just that, an emergency. It’s not restricted to emergencies involving children though. It covers any dependant. Emergency Leave is unpaid, unless you as the employer choose to pay the employee. There’s no definition of an “emergency” or the time off that you deem it reasonable within which the employee deal with the emergency.
For example, someone called away to collect their child from school who has fallen ill would likely be deemed an emergency at the time they are responding to the call. You can give them the time off without pay for the rest of the day to deal with the emergency. If the child remains ill the following day, is it still an emergency? Possibly, possibly not.
You’ve got some flexibility in how you respond to this. You may agree to the employee taking a second day as holiday so that your employee can care for their child. Or you may allow a second day of emergency unpaid leave. If the child is likely to be ill longer than a couple of days it may be that you consider asking the employee to take Parental Leave to deal with the issue. There’s more about Emergency Leave here.
Is it time to outsource your HR? Contact Alison for a FREE HR trouble shooting call. We can establish the goals for your business, define what HR challenges or issues your currently facing and let you know how Metis HR can help you. Call 01706 565 332 or email info@metishr.co.uk
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