{ the dental team } by Jodi Schafer, SPHR, SHRM-SCP
Dealing with a PTO Spender (Abuser)
I have a long-time staff member who’s really good at her job … when she’s here. It doesn’t matter how much paid time off (PTO) she’s granted each year; she burns through it by the third quarter and then has no cushion for unplanned absences (which she ends up taking with- out pay). We’ve had several talks with her over the years, but her behavior doesn’t seem to change. It would be one thing if she was using the time for planned vacations, because we could deny those requests if she was running short on time. Instead, her life seems to consist of one emergency after another and very few of her absences are ever planned for. We don’t want to lose her as a full-time employee but want to send a message that this can’t con- tinue. One idea we had was to reduce her pay by $0.50/hour for every day she ran over her PTO allotment. Is this legal? Are there other ways we could address this?
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here are three kinds of employees when it comes to use of PTO: spenders, savers and the rest of us. Based on your question, PTO
spenders are the issue here. Let’s discuss a few different ways to handle this employee.
You could look at your policy and write it in a manner that requires advance notice to use PTO or the time will not be paid. Unfortu- nately, it is doubtful that this will change your employee’s behavior and it will likely anger the rest of your staff. After all, PTO is designed to allow for flexibility.
You could stop allowing your employee to take time off without pay. While this sounds good, it’s not practical, because most of the time is unplanned and I’m sure, for quite dramatic reasons. When your employee calls in, you will have no way of forcing he or she to come in to work. You could reduce his or her pay by $.50 an hour, as you suggest. This is OK as long as it does not drop her below minimum wage. I’m not crazy about the idea, though, as it could easily have unintended consequences as well as become an adminis- trative burden. I also wonder if a drop in pay would create the impact you’re hoping for. The employee already is losing pay by taking additional days off with no PTO to cover
22 focus | JUL/AUG 2020 | ISSUE 4 them and yet, does it anyway.
It might be more beneficial to calculate how many hours your employee actually worked in the last 12 months to see if he or she still meets your definition of ‘full-time’. If all of this extra time off equates to less than a full- time workload, then the employee may no longer qualify for several of the benefits your practice offers to full-time employees, e.g. paid holidays, paid time off, health insurance, dental benefits, uniform allowance, etc. Loss of full-time status may be a bigger conse- quence for the employee and one that won’t negatively affect the rest of your staff.
Regardless of the ramifications you choose to impose, I think it will be difficult to near impossible to change your employee’s behav- ior. This is who he or she is and it’s been the pattern for a long time now. Ultimately, you will be faced with two options, 1) retain the employee and learn to live with it or 2) termi- nate employment. I know this sounds harsh, and you aren’t going to be excited about either option, but this is often the reality.
Ask yourself: • Why do you want to keep the employee? • What does the practice gain from retaining the employee? What does the
practice lose?
• What impact does the employee’s behav- ior have on other staff members?
• How difficult will it be to replace the employee?
If you decide you want to keep the employee on, be prepared to: • Listen to coworkers’ complaints about the employee.
• Deal with the increased resentment from coworkers who have to cover for the employee.
• See an increase in other staff members calling in without notice and other violations of your policies, and;
• See an increase in the offending em- ployee’s “spending” behavior.
Situations like this make it difficult to be the leader. Ultimately, you are responsible for the best interests of your practice as a whole. Keep that in mind as you weigh the pros and cons of various consequences, and ultimately, the pros and cons of keeping this employee on staff. f
Jodi Schafer is owner of Human Resource Management Services. To learn more about her and services available, visit workwithhrm.com.
