I started a new assignment last week and one of my first crisis’ of sorts was when my HR Assistant (I have but the one), told me (in tears) that her childcare arrangements had fallen asunder and she needed to take the rest of the week off as emergency leave, it was payroll deadline week, I was new, had no back up and I had a very distraught and upset employee!
In this instance, this employee took the leave out of her annual leave, but any remaining emergency leave she requires (and our policy allows for 3 days emergency leave unpaid) must be unpaid! (My week without her was pure hell by the way)
Requests for emergency leave is one of the most common, not to mention contentious situations I encounter regularly in HR. The law, however, is on the employees side and its very difficult both morally and professionally to refuse the time off when an employee springs it on you no matter how much it sticks in your throat. Unfortunately it is almost always female employees who have the responsibility for the childcare arrangements which doesn’t augur well or promote the female cause at all when they drop all tools to dash off because the au pair has upped sticks and left.
The moral of this sorry tale is always have a clause covering unplanned emergency leave in your policies and apply it to all! those with children and those without!
The law states that employees are entitled to have a ‘reasonable’ amount of time off to deal with unexpected events involving dependants which means spouses, children or parents or anyone living in your house who relies on you. Flatmates and sharers do not count, neither do burst boilers or deliveries. Basically emergency leave is just that and its to deal with emergencies i.e. childcare has broken down, mum is in hospital with a broken hip etc. I would also not call someone ending up in jail an emergency!
Word of warning:- employees opinion of what is an emergency and an employers usually are worlds apart, I had a character once who genuinely thought a broken nail a genuine life threatening emergency, conversely I also came across an employee who didn’t tell us his wife was having emergency life saving treatment for a life threatening brain tumour and he would have been perfectly entitled to emergency leave for that! No second guesses who got a bonus that year!
Emergency leave should not last longer than a day or two, one or two days is enough to deal with the emergency and put plans in place. If ‘emergencies’ occur regularly then a management chat is entirely reasonable and you can deny the time off if the time taken is excessive. Make sure your records are watertight and robust and you should be fine (Noblehr can help you here).
One more thing Emergency Leave should not be confused (but often is) with Parental Leave (will deal with this separately). I also recommend Compassionate Leave also be treated separately (again I will deal with this at a later date.
Any questions on this or any other subject we here at Noble HR are only too happy to help.
