I’ve had my business for almost 20 years and I haven’t come across this yet. I have an employee who’s been with me for about five years. For the most part he is good. He is a salaried employee and gets three weeks of paid vacation.
He recently injured himself outside of work and wasn’t able to perform the physical tasks that his job requires. He took three weeks off to rest, attend doctors appointments and physical therapy. He also took one of his vacation weeks earlier in the year. I had given him a full salary throughout the time he was unable to work. Now he has two weeks of vacation left and has put in a request for one of them.
Do you think it’s unreasonable to ask that he give up one or both of those weeks considering I paid him for the three weeks he wasn’t here?
The correct thing to do would’ve been to put him on short term disability/leave (whatever it’s called). Too late to ask him to use the vacation days for his past injury, you will likely only upset your employee by doing this.