Emotional intelligence
How to treat your direct reports fairly in the situation when both of them want to take same day (saturday) off of work to take classes in college. And at least one of them have to work on saturdays...
That's a great question. This has happened before. I asked them the collectively work it out. They did. One person took it online. It helped foster their relationship.
I take requests on the first come first serve bases.
However when it comes to education its every important we accommodate so i would talk to both employees and try to come up with a solution of working half day each and having school on the other half of the day. This worked out very nice in one occasion.
alma,
I think this is a great, balanced approach to take to really help both parties & get the work accomplished.
Ryan Meers, Ph.D.
I would grant the day off to whoever came to me first and asked for it off. But, if they both came to me at the same time I would say I would have to give it to the person that has been with the company the longest. I do like the idea of asking the direct reports to work together to figure out a solution. I believe I may have an issue with days off during the holidays. So, this is very helpful to hear what others are doing.
Sharon,
I think this is a fair approach. Another idea (that's messier for sure) is to have them discuss what they are doing with that day off. If one person is just going to be hanging out at home & doing yard work or something, maybe they can be a little more flexible than someone who has family coming in from out of town.
Ryan Meers, Ph.D.
