A practice manager struggles with managing a PTO policy that leads to team members overusing their time off early in the year. In this episode of the Uncharted Podcast, Dr. Andy Roark and practice management super nerd, Stephanie Goss help a practice manager having a hard time balancing their team's use of paid time off (PTO). The manager explains that they simplified PTO, lumping sick days and vacation time together to give their staff more autonomy. However, it’s backfired, leaving them frustrated as team members are either taking too much time off or asking for guidance on whether they should come in sick. Andy and Stephanie offer practical advice on how to set clear guidelines while maintaining a positive culture, how to establish boundaries without micromanaging, and how to approach the situation without becoming the “PTO villain.” Let’s get into this episode!
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Episode Transcript
Stephanie Goss: Hey everybody. I am Stephanie Goss, and this is another episode of the Uncharted Podcast. This week on the podcast, Andy and I are deep in the mailbag with an episode that comes to us from a manager. Oh, boy, did I feel this one? It is someone who is struggling because their team has PTO. No designation. Between sick and vacation time, because they don't want anybody to have to lie to them.
They just want them to take the time they need, and over time as there's more and more call-outs. This manager is getting frustrated with feeling like, does anybody in this whole world actually know how to adult. This one was really spicy. Let's get into it.
Dr. Andy Roark: And we are back. It's me, Dr. Andy Roark and the one and only Stephanie is there anyone out there because it's getting harder and harder to breathe, Goss. That's right. We got a PTO episode.
Stephanie Goss: It's getting harder and harder to breathe. I love it. How's it going, Andy Roark?
Dr. Andy Roark: Oh, It is amazing. It's amazing. I have been walking on sunshine for like three days now…
Stephanie Goss: Yeah.
Dr. Andy Roark: because I set…
Stephanie Goss: You're to the opportunity to sing that song as you say that?
Dr. Andy Roark: Walking on sunshine. Woah. Don't it feel good? I I set the most ridiculous, stupid goal for myself and I
Stephanie Goss: I was wondering when we were going to hear about this on the podcast.
Dr. Andy Roark: It was, you knew it was coming. All right.
Stephanie Goss: The guns are out today.
Dr. Andy Roark: I was like, you might wonder why I don't have sleeves on my t-shirt while we're recording. Let me tell you. Let me start by saying I know this is ridiculous. You don't have to
Stephanie Goss: It's not.
Dr. Andy Roark: send me emails. It is. It's because it's so absolutely ridiculous. Anyway, I decided about six actually about six years ago.
I started joking about and then six months ago I said, you know what I have come to believe that if I set my mind to a ridiculous task, and I get serious about it, and I am consistent in my pursuit of it, I can do it. I I have I I did not believe that I was capable of a lot of things that I have figured out in my life just by saying, I'm gonna work
Stephanie Goss: I'm gonna figure it out.
Dr. Andy Roark: on this three times a week, and I am not joking around and I am not going to back off.
I am going to keep doing it and just slow measured progress into it. Anyway, I decided I wanted to be able to do a muscle and a muscle up is when you grab the chin up bar and you swing a little bit and pull yourself, and instead of putting your chin over the bar, you put your whole torso over the bar, and then you push up on your arms.
So at the end of the movement, your hips are against the chin up bar, and your upper body is sticking up in the air. And then you can swing back down so you're, you know, the bar is way up over your head. And I decided I was gonna do it. I have been working towards it, and working towards it, and I've been getting closer, and closer.
And last week, I was falling, I was almost on top of it, and I would kind of slide. It was like, it's like the cat sliding, like when you see their eyes and they recognize the blanket is going off the couch. And they're like, ugh, it was that. was me sliding back. But, anyway. I rested up and I was like, I'm doing it.
I could just feel it. It was Saturday. I was like, I'm going to do this thing. And I got my phone and I set it up so I could film and I did it. And I did a muscle up and I have been celebrating ever since. And it has been challenging to celebrate because muscle ups don't come up in conversation as often as would think.
And so I have had to work really hard to figure out ways to tell people about this muscle up. In a way that's natural but I'm doing it guys. I know, well, I've got the video keyed up on my phone. So I'm ready to go. So I'll be in the exam room and I'll say something like you know getting a pet to lose weight is hard.
It's kind of like a muscle up. Do you know, do you know what a muscle up is? Come look at this video. This was my first muscle up. It was just from a couple days ago. And so I am continuing to show muscle ups. I sent my muscle up video to Dr. Jules Benson, who's a good friend of mine. And I was like, you're not going to be able to do this on your silly little bicycle.
Because he rides bikes. And he wrote back and said, that was difficult for you, question mark. I was God damn you, Jules. I honestly considered making a video for our team that has me at the beginning of the video saying guys I've got an all hands announcement. I'm gonna need everybody to watch this video and give a thumbs up when over so I know that everyone's watched it and then cut to the muscle up video right there. But I couldn't, didn't, I didn’t get motivated to do it, but I could see me rickrolling the team to get them to watch me do this muscle up.
Stephanie Goss: I mean, it is to be fair, it is in all, in we poke fun, Jules, you, me, we poke fun at you the whole team but I, In all seriousness, like you set a goal and you went after it. And like, I'm super proud of you because that does take work and dedication and it is about changing your habits and your behaviors.
And while it's a cross fitties sport ball kind of thing that I'm just like, no, that doesn't really track in my world. But I think the, you know, the bigger messaging is like, hey, you can do this. And you don't, you don't start with an impossible, like a truly impossible, you start with the thing that feels impossible, right?
Like if you had picked a goal of, I don't know, the CrossFit term, I mean, I know you do like the hard things. So I, what's a super, super hard thing that like your gym owner that would never be able to do?
Dr. Andy Roark: What? Or like like the Olympic gymnast the pommel horse gymnast
Stephanie Goss: you're just like, if you set that as your goal, you're going to be like, I'm never going to get there.
But this feels impossible to you. And you had the growth mindset of, okay, it feels impossible, but is it actually impossible? I don't think that it is. And so I'm going to go after it and here's how I'm going to get there.
Dr. Andy Roark: I would, I I joked about it for, like, six years, in that, like, that's when I started sort of working out and stuff, and I saw people doing it, and I was like, that's insane. And so I would, I would wait until my wife was around, so I could I could embarrass her.
Stephanie Goss: You're secretly doing it.
Dr. Andy Roark: And then, yeah, I'd wait until my wife was around, and then I would yell, Muscle up!
And I would just flail at the chin up bar. Like, It was not even, it was so ridiculous, I thought it was hilarious, and Allison turned beet red every time I did it, and I just, I thought it was great fun.
Stephanie Goss: Of course you did.
Dr. Andy Roark: I, no, no real asp no real intention aspiration being able to do this but I'll tell you this. Here's the thing, okay so all this aside, I know there's a lot of people whose eyes have thoroughly rolled up in their and they're fast forwarding. If you're fast forwarding stop right here one second. Here's the real thing that I want to say from this: It doesn't matter what the goal is.
I understand my goal is stupid. It made me happy. I'm not trying to impress anybody I'm, you know, I'm almost 50 years old. I'm not walking around with my shirt off. It's just it was a thing that I wanted to see if I could actually do. Here's the real takeaway I spent a lot of my life believing in grand gestures. Meaning, I believed that you could do the big thing and it would pay off.
You could make the impassioned speech to your team and they would get motivated. You could overhaul your front desk area and it would fix your image problem in the community.
That, you know, like whatever you can take the girl on the perfect date and it will, revolutionize your relationship, like whatever.
And I just, it took me way too long to realize that consistency crushes grand gestures. You are better off not taking the girl on the wild extravagant date and instead consistently having, doing things
Stephanie Goss: Mm hmm.
Dr. Andy Roark: You know what I mean? Being there in a small way that you keep up over the long of where maybe we're not going to make an international trip, but man, we're going to, we're going to have a lot of good throughout the entire year.
And I just I, that was just a big thing for me. So anyway, I joke about it, but I am deeply proud of it. It's just, it's a silly thing, but it was It was a lot of just slowing down and going, I'm just going to keep, I'm going to do this three times a week by myself. Go and do it. And
Stephanie Goss: Look at you go. I'm super proud of you. You should, you should be proud of yourself. That is a big, that is a big thing. And speaking of showing up, we have a mailbag letter this week about showing up the team showing up. Or not showing up in that regard. So we've got,
Dr. Andy Roark: Showing up or not. Right.
Stephanie Goss: So we got a letter from a practice manager or a practice owner who is hey my team gets PTO because I don't want to have to designate between sick or vacation. I don't want to know why they're not coming in, good for you, you're following some good HR standards there.
You don't want to know. You just want them to take the time if they need it. The policy is if you are stay home if you're sick. Nobody's got time for the to spread around. Nobody's got time for the, colitis that's going to go through the team because somebody comes in with it.
However, this manager is struggling because they feel like they're getting lots of, well, you know, I've got a headache. I've got a tickle in my throat. Do you want me to come in? And they're being asked to play the judge for these team members. And so this leader is I'm really frustrated because I just want part of the reason why we made this policy is that I stay out of it.
Like, I just want them to be adults. I want them to be able to tell me too sick. I've got a fever. I'm not coming in. or whatever it is. I don't want to have to ask you the mom questions. Do you have a fever? Did you drink enough water? Did you take some Advil and it still hasn't gone away? Like, I don't want to have to do that.
I just need you to decide if you're too sick to work. And so they said within the team, they have this split. They have a lot of older team members who are of the old like, you come in half dead and you let them send you home. You don't ever call in sick. And then they have younger team members who are calling in sick because their boyfriend is home constipated and they have to help them.
Like literally I had a team member that was a story as a manager, right? And I'm like, really? That's a thing that I'm now having to deal with
Dr. Andy Roark: That's a two person job. Okay.
Stephanie Goss: So this manager is like, now I'm stuck in the middle, right? I have one half of the team that's doing this and I have the other half of the team and I'm, I thought it was being nice.
I thought I was being nice by telling them, I don't want to know, like you figure it out. I trust you. But now I literally just had to change the handbook. And so this is where it gets, this is where it gets good cause they're like, okay, I had to change the handbook because it's April and half of my team.
more than half of my team has used more than half of their PTO and it's only April. So this is a practice where instead of accruing as they go by the hours that they work, there's generally two types of PTO. There's the, you, you accrue it as you work it. So you get it throughout the year. And by the end of the year, if you work at four full time schedule, you get the total of your PTO benefits to take over the course of the year.
But that means that you, by the end of the year, have hours that you then don't get to take until the next year because you don't finish earning them until the end of the year. The opposite is the practices where they will front load everybody and they say, okay, if you have four weeks of PTO, January one or September one, or whatever your bank dump date is, everybody gets that dumped into their PTO bank.
And then you can just use it. And then when you're out, you're out. Well, this practice is one of those practices so that they get it January one. And by, by April, they had a ton of team members who were already out of their PTO. And this manager is these happened to be some of the same team members who at the end of last year were calling out sick.
And then we're complaining to me because they couldn't afford to stay home, but they also didn't have PTO to take cause they used it all at the beginning of the year. And they're just like, look, I'm sick of all of this. Do I go back to separating it out and be strict about it? Do I set a limit on the number of sick days that people can use in a year?
Like, is it unreasonable to say? Hey, you're getting sick a lot. What is a lot? How do I make it less subjective? And so they, they ended it with is it unreasonable to expect them to be adults basically? And where do I find the balance in all of this? And I thought that it was such a great. Such a great email and such a great question.
And I was like let's do this one.
Dr. Andy Roark: I just want to send a shout out to all the leaders who are like, I'll keep this simple, you guys figure it out for yourself. I remember having those thoughts. I remember when I was young and my heart was full of optimism. And I was like, they'll figure it out. It'll be fine. I know how to reduce the headache from me.
I'll let them sort it themselves. Yeah, I
Stephanie Goss: Bless, bless their hearts. This might be the shortest episode that we ever do.
Dr. Andy Roark: (laughter) Just, the fact that we just stop here and laugh and laugh. That's, that, I think that's a lot of what you need to know about how this goes. Yeah. No, it's it's anyway
Stephanie Goss: Okay, so let's start with headspace.
Dr. Andy Roark: All right, I so I I get it. I love conceptually the idea of look here's your days. I don't want to know
Stephanie Goss: You're an adult. I trust you.
Dr. Andy Roark: It this is how like I don't care if you go to Paris or if you have COVID. They’re your days like what you know, what whatever they are and I will say from this letter, it seems like it's a fairly generous policy.
Stephanie Goss: Yes. Oh yes.
Dr. Andy Roark: It’s not like, here’s your four days for the year. It's not that it seems like a good chunk of time. So so let me just say that's not the pickle that seems like people are in but they got a lot of pto days Which you can imagine if people use all of up before april boy That person's been gone a lot because there's a good chunk of days anyway Flaming Raging Sword check.
The first thing to know that getting angry and frustrated is not going to get us out of this situation. And so getting frustrated about people who refuse to stay home when they're sick, doesn't help getting frustrated at people who stay home at the drop of a dime. Yeah, that's not going to help. None of that's going to help.
The emotional part is not going to help. So Flaming Raging Sword check, make sure that we're not. That we're not,
Stephanie Goss: Let's get Zen before we do, before we
Dr. Andy Roark: we're fired up. Yeah.
Stephanie Goss: gotta, you be able to
Dr. Andy Roark: Number two is we, this is an opportunity for us to get really burned by grabbing onto should. Like they should do this. They should hold on to their days. They should ration them. They should have an idea of when it's sick enough to come in and when it's not and they should should should should
Look, you see the problem. It's happening. Let's accept it And, let's deal with it. The whole policy was created to not get drawn into this issue, and here you are, drawn into so, let's fix it so that we don't continue to end up back here At some point, I love the idea, I wish it would work, I, maybe there's some things we could do to help make it work, but we gotta just own the fact that this is not working as it's set up now. And just more and more in that idea. And then let's get to work on making a system that's going to. That's going to give us
Stephanie Goss: mm hmm. And let me tell you, that headspace is hard because as a manager who feels like they spend, and I'm speaking heart to heart to my other managers, like, boy, when you write a policy and you feel like, oh, I've done a damn good job of closing the loopholes and I've thought about all of the things. And then here comes, you know, here comes Billy and he's just let me find another loophole for you.
It's hard to stay in that Zen space because it's frustrating. You're trying to do the right thing. You're trying to treat them like adults. You're trying to think through the scenarios and help them solve the problem. Most of the time when we write, especially those kind of detailed policies, they're written because we're trying to either close the loophole, or because we're trying to help the team.
Neither of those two things is wrong, and it is really frustrating when you feel like you do that hard work, and you have to redo it. So, a big part of this headspace is getting to that place where you're just like, okay. I'm going to let all of that go because your mind is going to immediately be like but what about Sarah last week?
That it's going to worm in. You have to be able to just, okay. Just breathe. Just
Dr. Andy Roark: Yeah. I I think that's the hardest mental part. Okay. There's a spectrum from having no rules to having red tape bureaucracy out the yin yang where, I mean, it's just an absolute nightmare. Like we've all seen caricatures of places where you have to fill out six forms to request. And you know, you have to schedule with five different people.
Like that's an absolute administrative nightmare. It's a nightmare for the employees. We don't, we don't want That's that's practice again and again, and again, the middle path is usually the right one, which means we need to have enough guidelines so that people kind of know what they're doing. And we smooth out most of the major hurdles, but you do not want such an airtight system that no one can find a loophole because they'll still find a loophole and it just will make everything else wildly restrictive unwieldy and make people And so giving up on. Where we are and going, okay, let's accept that. We need to make some changes, do not sprint to the other and come up with a 12 page PTO It just, it's not what you It's funny that you also sort of said that thing about the person coming in and having another loophole.
Cause I wrote down sometimes we have to write down sense and you should write it once. Knowing that it will only help you 20, 25 percent of the time, there's still a huge, you write it down, there will, there will be who will come flooding in but at least, at least we're going to try to reduce the load of dealing possible.
Yes. All right. The last thing that I want to say here is this in headspace. We need to pick our words and actions very carefully
Stephanie Goss: Yes. I would agree.
Dr. Andy Roark: because PTO, especially PTO slash sick time off is something that people can get real fired up about really
And it has the potential to get you labeled as the villain.
Very especially if people think you're taking their pto away and you say but andy I'm, not taking their pto away from i'm just labeling it. Some of it is sick time and like oh, buddy My sweet summer child like I I see I see
Stephanie Goss: Bless your hearts.
Dr. Andy Roark: I'm but I am and I'm but I am telling you like the potential i'm not sure it'll be seen that way by everybody And you will have to manage the fallout of people being like that's our
Stephanie Goss: Mm-Hmm
Dr. Andy Roark: And so you can do it And we'll talk in the action steps a little bit about how to do but we want to tread lightly.
We want to, my advice is to sort of make some incremental you know. I don't want to make too, I don't want to do this too many times, but at the same time, I'd rather, if I'm going from nothing, To some structure, I'd rather come out a little bit light on the structure than shoot over into the over structured side and people are really mad and they feel like a lot has been taken away from. So anyway, there's sort of a
Stephanie Goss: hmm. Mm hmm. Yeah.
Dr. Andy Roark: that's kind of, that's kind of where my headspace is. Nobody, nobody's a villain here. We just, we're we tried something in good faith. I would say the employees used it in good faith, but it's just not quite working.
Stephanie Goss: Right.
Dr. Andy Roark: So we're going to need to, we're going to need to tinker with a little bit.
I don't think we should, we should throw the baby out with the bath water. There's probably some communication around this that we can, we can So I think this is a, it's a fairly subtle fix that we can do. We just need to be careful and think it all the way through before we start changing stuff because of the potential volatility.
Stephanie Goss: And I have a I have a thread to pull through on that when we get into action steps. Is there is there anything else that you have for Headspace?
Dr. Andy Roark: No, I think that's probably I think, remember to assume good intent on the part of everybody. Don't tell yourself stories about why people are the way they Just try to set that aside. Assume that they're doing their
Stephanie Goss: hmm.
Dr. Andy Roark: Assume that, you know, that they're, yeah, just assume that they're doing their best and they're acting in good faith and with good And don't beat yourself up for not making a perfect policy that everybody loved and honored right out of the bat. I think it's always good. To try to give people autonomy. And again, we talk a lot about this on our team because I, it's a big thing for me. And I think, and Stephanie, I don't know if you speak to this, but like, I think our team has learned that's just kind of a part about working for me is I tend to lean on autonomy and I want people to be able to make choices for
Stephanie Goss: Mm hmm.
Dr. Andy Roark: And that's important to me. And I own the downside to that, which is. Sometimes we have to sort things out and there are not very specific rules to
Stephanie Goss: Mm hmm. Mm hmm.
Dr. Andy Roark: so we have to have some conversations about, are your needs being met? Are my needs being met? And we kind of sort that But yeah, I think that that's, I am definitely more in team people having autonomy than I am let's regulate people through rules as much as possible.
Stephanie Goss: Okay. I like it. Let's let's take a break and then I want to pull through that thread into our action steps.
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Dr. Andy Roark: All right. Action steps, you know, almost always. I feel like we're in a we're in a trend of opening up action steps with talking to the team or how we talk to the team to gather information, right? The first, the first action step is generally going to be investigate for us. I think that's a look back at some of our previous notes.
In this case, I'm curious if the team has suggestions or suggestions. About what guidelines are good for staying home when you're sick. Versus sucking up and coming it in. It's funny when we ask people to make decisions in the moment, meaning I'm sniffling and I'm trying to come in and you say, I don't know, do you think you should go in, this is a terrible time for me to make this decision because I'm thinking about letting the team down.
I'm thinking about the fact that I've got a car payment coming whatever the things are on my mind. I've got all these, all of these ideas in real time. I'm feeling a lot of different pressures. It's, I always say. If you have a policy in your practice that makes doctors make moral decisions on the floor.
That's a terrible policy. We do not want to make moral decisions or emotional decisions in the moment. We want to make them when the thing is not happening and we have a clear head and we say, what is best for everybody? How do we want to go forward? And that's when we want to make those decisions, not when people are staring at us with tears in their eyes.
This feels the same way to me of, I don't want people making this decision when their friend is on the phone saying, look, we're going to be really short handed if you don't come in. Things like, or their boyfriend is looking at them and going, seriously, I you to stay home. That's, let's go ahead and sort this out when everybody's feeling just fine. then,
Stephanie Goss: Nobody's had home on the toilet.
Dr. Andy Roark: to make policy. Exactly.
Stephanie Goss: No, it's, it is true. And it's, I think that wasn't, I have a thread from our headspace that I want to pull through, but I agree with you. Like I think thinking about it as a team and and talking about it as a team also helps. It just helps get the perspective because I think it's fair and should be heard.
Like if we, if we really are a team, then it should be important to me if I have a team member who has an immunocompromised kid at home, it should be important to me that a, like, guidepost for them is if they say, Okay, I would like to not have people come in if they have a fever over 101, because that's what the school uses as our judgment point, right?
That seems rational, and I'm going to listen to that for multiple reasons. One is because somebody else is already using it as a guidepost, so it feels solid. Two is that I care about the person and I care why they care about that, right? And so if you have a majority of your team, regardless of what generation they are, because this is not a generational problem.
A lot of us frame it that way because that's how our brains sort it, but it is not. If we have someone who, if we have a lot of people on our team who are like, I don't really care one way or the other. I just want there to be enough people here to do the work. Then you take both ends of the spectrum that are left over.
Who's someone who cares a lot about something and who's someone who you have the rest of the team that doesn't really care. Where's that middle, where's that middle ground? Does it seem reasonable to everybody? And I'll tell you, so for my own example, so we did this. We went through a period, we went through a period of this, we did it when we COVID hit, after COVID had first happened, and then we started having the, well, maybe I have COVID, but I haven't tested positive, and we needed a guide post.
For the whole team to feel safe, right? And feel comfortable because we were still in the throes of like, this is the dangerous disease that it is. And we were worried about protecting ourselves, protecting our clients, all those things. So we sat down as a team and we talked about it and the team was like, okay, well, can we all agree that if you have a fever over a hundred point nine and we use the school's guideposts, cause that was what all the local schools said.
If your kid has a fever, we're a hundred nine, a hundred point nine. Don't send them to daycare or work. Okay, cool. Then we said, okay, well. But we have, but we always get the stomach flu this time of year, like it's coming. What about if everybody who's barfing has to stay home? Okay. That made sense. And then we got to the, okay, but if you have diarrhea, don't come to work either because nobody wants that in the clinic.
But then we had a team member who said, okay, but I, I have GI disease and that's like a regular occurrence for me. Do I just not come to work? And here's the thing, it was a really valid perspective and it caused the team as a whole to sit back and say, Oh. Wait a minute if you don't have a problem, that could be an indicator that you probably shouldn't come to work.
But if you do have an underlying condition or reason why that thing happens, and it, it makes sense medically, like, there should be an exception to that, right? Because we don't want you to miss every day of work. And so it was only in talking that out as a team that we said, okay, if you don't have some underlying condition, and you don't have to justify it to us or tell us about it, This is where you have the autonomy.
I trust you to trust your body. Does this feel normal or abnormal to your everyday life? Because you only, you live in your body. Only you know what those symptoms feel like. And so that was where we as a team decided all together that we would make that individual judgment and we would do it with the best intention of the team as a whole behind it.
And so we had to be able to justify that question to ourselves. If I come into work today, And tomorrow Krista has what I have. Am I going to be okay with that? And that was the question that we asked ourselves, like when we were trying to…
Dr. Andy Roark: Oh, I like that.
Stephanie Goss: call in sick was, is this okay? Is this part normal for me?
How would I feel if someone else comes down with it tomorrow? That became the acceptable guideposts for us as a team, but only in having that conversation about what is normal, what is not, did we get to that point.
Dr. Andy Roark: I like it. I really like that question, you know that ties back as you is there set up and have this conversation I think it's really important and this goes back to what? The idea that this, this can be a bit of a tricky issue, and we want to be careful about how we talk about it. We really want to frame the issue in a healthy, productive way.
And so for me, when we talk to the team about what are our guidelines sort of going to be, I want to frame them around around safety. And making sure that people get, well, that they can take care of each other. And then also, and at the same time, we need to balance that with wanting to have people around to get the work done and some of that is about it's not about coming into work when you're sick It's more about please.
Let us know as early as possible so that we can shift and cover but again, it's good to have that conversation around the you know with with the team because I I say I struggle with that as a young person because I'm very much one of those like I said, I would be there I'm going there person
Stephanie Goss: Yes. Same here. Mm hmm.
Dr. Andy Roark: and I'm not It was hard for me to come to the realization that I'm being more kind, not waiting to see how I feel in the morning when I wake
Stephanie Goss: Giving them notice the day
Dr. Andy Roark: but saying it's 5 p. m. and I feel like crap
Stephanie Goss: Huh. I'm gonna call now.
Dr. Andy Roark: I should call now and but that again, it's I respect people who are like I'm gonna suck it up. I I get it because I was one of those and only When I was then responsible for others was I like look I love you're trying to go to bat for our team, and for our patients. I see you, I see good intent, and at the same…
Stephanie Goss: I heart you so hard.
Dr. Andy Roark: time, I, you know, not only do I want you to stay home, in the future, I want you to throw in the
Stephanie Goss: Yeah
Dr. Andy Roark: 12 hours earlier. Because that's the kindest thing you can do for me. But I didn't, I didn't know that. I didn't understand it. Because again, I felt like, The chips were down, were short handed, like if there's a way you can make it happen, make it happen.
And again, all that's kind of around the messaging that I was getting, not directly from my employer, but from the culture.
Stephanie Goss: Well and I do think that there is something somewhat I know it's not generationally tied but age tied because I will tell you I gained a whole new perspective. You said when you have to take care of others, and I think as a leader, when you experience this it's one thing, but also as a parent. So now when I became a parent and people were doing what I had always done, which is drag themselves in and then get told to go home because you want to be there for your team and, and get the job done because you said you were going to do it.
If I'm bringing something home and now not only do I have to stay home, but I'm perfect, I'm feeling perfectly fine. And I could be there supporting you as a team member. But I'm home sick because my kids are sick, and I don't, that brings a whole new level of perspective to it around the sick piece, and I think that is something that I wouldn't have understood until I experienced it as a parent, you know, I think it's just one of those things that you do live through, and so I do think that I gained a lot of additional perspective that I didn't have after I became a parent and went through that on, on the sick side.
Dr. Andy Roark: The other thing I was saying here too, is this doesn't have to be all or nothing chiseled in stone. The policy that you keep and the conversation you have with your team right now, it might be very different as the next wave of COVID sweeps through country. You know what I mean?
Or the flu that's just shutting down elementary schools is rolling up. You go, hey guys we're going to this from our usual thing to, if you're coughing and wheezing, even if you feel okay, I'm going to ask you to call and let's talk about whether or not you come, you're going in and we want to err on the side of caution and if you're, if you're well staffed, then you might say, look, if you're coughing, even if you feel fine, I want you to call and and plan on staying home and we'll, you take it from there. And again, I think a lot of times people are like, we have to get this just right. And then we'll never touch it again. And I'd say, well, get, get it right for day to day functioning, but know that there's, we might tinker with this and tighten the screws down or loosen them up a little bit, depending on, on what's going on.
Stephanie Goss: I think it's important too because we've been focusing a lot on the sick piece of it because it's the easy piece to talk about and define with the team. And, It, when you have PTO and part of why you have PTO is not separating out and defining between sick and vacation. I also do think that when you're talking about it with the team, I think there's two pieces that are very important.
One is asking them what they think and getting their opinions and perspective. And when you do that, talk about the sick, but also celebrate. the time off and the time away because if you're giving them that as a benefit, and this practice is a great example, their team gets four, everybody on their team gets four plus weeks of PTO.
That's a generous start policy in an industry whose standard has been like two weeks. For 20 years, right? So these, these guys are getting good time off. Part of it is, I want you all to be able to take the time off. And so we need to structure it so that we can support that, right? Like, I want to know that if Kate is taking her time off because she's going to go to Hawaii, I want and Amanda's sick.
I want to figure out how to support both of you at some point when the team gets big enough. There has to be some rules and some guidelines to help make that possible. Because just like Kate wants to go to Hawaii I want to support you when you say, hey, my brother's getting married in two weeks.
Can I have the week off? There's got to be some rules because the reality is we have a business to run. And I think as a leader, I've made this mistake of leaning in on the problem that, like, why is it forefront and burning in front of you versus the positive of the policy as a, as a whole?
And the reality is it's a benefit and you want it to be a benefit. It shouldn't feel punitive. And I think that's where the, so I said before the break that I wanted to pull a thread through and, and we left off talking about We left off talking about that it has the ability to make you a villain, and I think the really important part when you talk to the team is that it has to be framed in what could be possible, even the changes, what could be possible in the future.
And as a manager, you, this is part of your headspace of getting to Zen. You have to be willing to let go of what might currently be happening. And you have to be able to look at those team members who took and used all their PTO by April. And say, I'm not going to punish you for the rest of the year because this thing has happened.
If we're making changes to the policy we're not going to have it impact the team mid cycle. This is going to be the next cycle around we're going to make these changes. Because it's really easy to bring that emotion and that frustration through and approach the conversation from an unintentionally penalizing way.
And that is the quickest way to make yourself the villain in this conversation.
Dr. Andy Roark: No, I so I really love that. So two things I want to pull out of what you just said, because they're on my list as well. Again, the theme for me here is hammer on balance, right? I want you guys to get vacation. I want you to be able to get off. I want you to be able to rest and recharge.
And, I don't want people to be stranded at work, short handed, surprised, you know, I don't want us to have, not have the staffing requirements that we have met let's talk about how we balance because there may be a hard time when not everybody can just, take time off on the same day.
What is the most fair way to find that balance? What is the most fair way to accommodate people and also make sure that the other people and our patients get the support that they need and just, again, keep going back to that balance as opposed taking things on a case by case again, it helps for me to show the team, the whole balance, because if you're having one on one conversations, everyone's going to come to you saying, I need this time off. This is about me and my time off, but don't you think my sister's wedding is important? Don't you understand how important this is? You don't want to get in that conversation.
You want to have the larger conversation of what are the policies to accommodate everybody and be as fair as possible so everybody can have what they need. So anyway, I, I just, I really think that balance is key. The other thing that you said that I really want to pull out is PTO and sick leave.
These are not areas where I would plan to spin the steering wheel fast. You need to be looking three, six months out for any changes that you're going to make. You need to signpost well ahead of time that things are going to change. And then you need to wait patiently and suck it up until that point.
And that's probably my number one. That's probably my number one piece of advice for not being a villain is, well one, you gotta with why, you gotta
Stephanie Goss: Not be a villain.
Dr. Andy Roark: and then two, yeah you gotta not be a villain, but gotta have to talk about the why, so that people understand it and they don't get to come up with their own idea and then you need to sign post it way in advance.
So that people can understand next year things are going to be different. But what you don't want to do is make a change now and because of decisions they made before you made this policy in the first place place. You just can't you can't do So anyway, I think that's a big I think I would also ask the team i'm sort of thinking out loud I'm curious what you think about this stephanie, but I think I would ask the team about PTO and safety catches and just say, Hey guys, I know that it's easy to use up your PTO and I want you to use up your PTO.
Sometimes I worry if people have used the vast majority of their PTO in the first six months that maybe they don't recognize Where they are, and I don't want you guys to be surprised. How can I help you? What type of communication would you guys like around your PTO? So that people kind of know where they stand.
I, if you don't want them to use four weeks in the first half of the year You probably shouldn't give them four weeks at the first of the year and say do whatever you want Like again, it's not what I would do. But if they want to use it, I mean technically that's their time. If that doesn't work for you Then we need to explain to them next year We're going to do this a little bit just so we don't have everybody gone at the very beginning And we're going to parse out some of this and also we don't want to end up with people running out, doing all their PTO and then not having anything for sick days at the end.
And so we're going to keep seven days, 10 days, whatever. We're going to keep that back and that's going to unlock. At the 6th at, June 1st, whatever, something like that. I don't know. There's ways to do it, but if if you don't want to adjust the way you do your PTO to address the problem, then I would talk to them about what kind of communication guys want?
And then again once we've laid this policy down guys, I think you have to let people make their choices And if you know if I tell you hey, it's february and you've used half of your pto And you go, okay, and I say hey It's march 1st and you use three quarters of your pto and you go Okay, when you use the last year pto on june 1st, and then you're like I can't, I have to take time off, but I can't afford to.
That ain't my problem. Like I'm sorry, I'm not going to be a jerk about it. I'm going to be sympathetic, but remember balance is what we talked and it's not fair to everybody else for you to get more PTO than they do. And you knew what you got and you knew where you and you made your choices.
And that's, I'm not going to badger you any more than I absolutely have to about your PTO. I'm going to put as few restrictions on you as I have to, to make sure our patients get the care that they need.
Beyond that, you're going to make your own choices and then you, you know, you sort of made your bed and you're, you're going to have to lie in And again, if you, as the owner, just hate that idea then we need to start adjusting the policy so that you can be okay with the choices that they make.
Stephanie Goss: Yeah I think what you said is is so key is that there has to be some sort of safety mechanisms regardless of which way you do it whether you front load it all or not or they earn it as they work. And so for me, one of the things I know that I have talked about with colleagues and that used to frustrate me is that for most of us, we print that on their pay stub.
It's part of that, like you're tracking it and see it. There's usually visibility, whether it's a binder that they look in and they can see their hours or they see it on their pay stub. There's usually some sort of visibility. And. As managers, when we have a system like that, it is frustrating AF when we feel like people are like, but I didn't know I didn't have PTO.
Well, I on pay stub every single time. In fact, I highlight it for you. So how do you not know, right? So this is where, again, we have to let go of that frustration is let go of that emotion and set up some sort of flagging system because the reality is we know people don't read. They don't pay attention.
Let's be honest. I don't look at my pay stub. I immediately shred it, right? I am part of the problem. And so let's. Let's meet them where they're at, and let's say, okay, we're gonna, we're not gonna do away with it, we're still gonna have transparency for you, and it would be an easy step, and I would not feel necessarily like I'm having to truly mom someone if there was, for me, if there was a safety mechanism, so to your Maybe it's flagging their PTO requests, so if you have them fill out a form or they put it in through your payroll software or whatever and they're asking for time off, they should be able, one of the questions they should be able to answer is, do you have PTO or will you have PTO available to cover this?
And are you electing to use that, that PTO or not? And some of it depends on how your policy is structured and all of that. Like you need to look at your own hospital rules, you need to look at your state. Your local rules and requirements for sick versus PTO and all of those things like do your legal homework but have a have a catch safety mechanism that Kicks in that asks them to be a part of the solution and say are you going to have time to take this off?
And if you run out of time before and this was a game changer for me because I was this manager and I experienced this where I had a team member who You Took a, used her time and she was the person who would often front load it. She wasn't always the one calling out at the end of the year, but she would use it.
And there was some frustration because every day that they got she used. And so, and then she would ask for additional days because she still had kids stuff. You know, she needed to take more time off because it's unrealistic to expect. Someone, if they take their PTO in the first part of the year, life happens.
No one's going to be able to go from June until December with perfect attendance, right? This is not elementary school. Life happens. It's very rare that someone is going to be able to do that. So my safety mechanism was to ask them when they put in the time off request. If you don't have PTO available, you have to acknowledge that you're going to take the time unpaid.
Or you choose to prioritize your time off requests. So this person was a planner on my team and they would put in their time off. And then once they had put in their time off requests for the four weeks that they, let's say that they accrued for the year, every other request that I got, I would ask them, do you want to prioritize this over any others you already have in the queue?
And they knew that if I could make it work, they could take the time off. and that I would, I wanted to support them. They were an excellent team member. They could take the time off. We would figure out how to make it happen, but they were acknowledging that it was unpaid and that they would be at the bottom of the barrel in terms of priority for how we scheduled that.
So it's about figuring out those safety mechanisms so that there is transparency in your team, because where this starts to get dicey is when those feelings start to come out from the rest of the team. Do they know what the policy is? Do they know how the policy is being evenly and equitably applied to the team as, as a whole?
That's where there starts to be a lot of resentment. And you can read that in this mailbag letter because this leader is like, hey. I thought I was trying to do this really good thing. And I'm also feeling like we have some people who maybe are taking advantage of it. And the reality is the team's probably feeling that too.
And there's, if you're feeling it as leader, the team is probably feeling it. And so I think it's really, I think I love that you pulled that out. And those were two just little things. They didn't take me any more time, but it allowed me to feel like I was asking them to be a part of the solution. And I was still instituting that safety mechanism where I could red flag it for myself and say, Oh, look.
This is a time off request that, you know, Angela has put in and she knows that she's not going to have time off to cover it, and she's okay with taking the time unpaid. And then I can, then if she, has the conversation or she's frustrated or complaining about her hours, I have the ability to go back to her and say, Hey, We talked about this and I just want, I would love to know like what changed, so that you can understand how to help do it better next time.
Dr. Andy Roark: Yeah, I agree. I think the last thing that I would say here is it's always good to check around, especially when you start having these thoughts, just around PTO versus sick days in your and so if there's any laws, anything you need to be aware of, just, I would just do a quick check. And that is, you know, that may be bouncing it off of your employment lawyer and just sort of saying, Hey, is there I need to know about these policies?
You could probably, you can probably search around online and sort of find out. Find that sort of stuff. Like I said, whenever I get into anything legal, I have to tell you, talk to your unemployment lawyer, but I just, I would want to do my homework and make sure there wasn't anything my state required that I was not checking the boxes on, because that's not a headache I want to have.
Stephanie Goss: Totally. Yeah, totally.
Dr. Andy Roark: Yeah, that's it. That's all I got.
Stephanie Goss: Me too. This was a fun one. This gets soapbox fired up about it.
Dr. Andy Roark: Sounds good. I'm going to go and stand underneath the chin up bar and imagine myself doing a muscle up, which I can't do right now because I'm tired.
Stephanie Goss: Because your guns hurt you did it yesterday.
Dr. Andy Roark: because I did it yesterday.
Stephanie Goss: Crossed the finish line.
Dr. Andy Roark: It's a, it's a rest but I'm going to stand underneath the muscle bar and anyone who gets near the chin up bar.
I'm going to show them my video of me doing a muscle up yesterday. That's what I'm off to do. I hope you guys are having a good afternoon as well.
Stephanie Goss: Can't with the mental image.
Dr. Andy Roark: If you have muscle up video of your own, you'd like to share, you can send it to podcasts@unchartedvet.com Stephanie Goss will get it.
Stephanie Goss: Thank you.
Dr. Andy Roark: Anyway, all right, guys, take care of everybody. I'll see you later.
Stephanie Goss: Well, gang, that's a wrap on another episode of the podcast. And as always, this was so fun to dive into the mailbag and answer this question. And I would really love to see more things like this come through the mailbag. If there is something that you would love to have us talk about on the podcast or a question that you are hoping that we might be able to help with, feel free to reach out and send us a message. You can always find the mailbag at the website. The address is unchartedvet.com/mailbag, or you can. Email us at podcast at uncharted vet. com. Take care everybody and have a great week. We'll see you again next time.
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