I've never seen this in my employment or contract work, and quite frankly, it seems a bit odd. No one plans to be sick, and asking people to call around while they are ill is a bit much. What are the repercussion if a substitute cannot be found? What happens in the time between the call off and the location of a suitable and willing substitute, and that substitute's arrival at the museum?
If someone's job is so vital, and so critical, that their duties cannot be handled by another person within the organization via an organizational structure diagram, then I might suggest that the organization needs to look at their operational plans and Emergency Response Plans and work on those? I believe that things like pandemic flu/major health crisis planning is covered in things like the
dPlan and there may be more covered in the
AAM's doc about disaster response.
If we're talking about a "hey I need to be out for several weeks/months for a procedure or treatment" situation, i.e. cancer treatment, major surgery, transplant recovery, then perhaps the person can work with HR to hire an interim replacement through the regular hiring channels prior to the start of leave (create job description, needed skills, project status documents, upcoming project documentation, password access, etc), similar to arranging for parental leave, or bring an internal person up to speed on the types of work that will need to be covered (and hash out appropriate additional compensation for that person(s)).
For positions like part-time front of house staff, hospitality
, etc., looking at how other customer service institutions handle those burdens could be useful. In previous retail experience, there was a running call list held by management/hr of staff who desired or were available to take on additional hours as needed, and that could be implemented when someone called in ill. It took the burden off the ill person and allowed the institution to keep functioning.
Further, staff were cross trained in various departments to help fill gaps when the need arrived at a moments notice, for example a member of department A falling ill during a shift or having an accident while on the job and cross trained member of less busy department B stepping in to fill some gaps until the end of the shift or until a replacement from the call list could arrive. If that couldn't happen, management could step in and take over those duties. This may be some of my time spent outside of the US talking, but sick time and illness should not be seen as a punishment, and the ill person should not carry any additional burden for their illness outside of notification. Institutional plans should be flexible and resilient enough to handle the absence (or loss) of a member of staff without significant disruption to the public or the day to day functions of the museum.
Might I also suggest journals as a way to keep things moving during an illness? I post regular updates to my project's Basecamp profile, but in a previous job where I was creating documentation and inventory from scratch, I kept a public GoogleDocs journal. I spent the last 10-15 minutes of each day writing out what I had done, a short summary of any major meetings or discussions, and anything else that was notable (i.e. when the mayor made a major suggestion that all downtown workers go home early due to impending snowstorm). I gave people access to this, in case I was to get ill or be hit by a bus on the way home.
I have type 1 diabetes, so the reality of life is that I could have a coma-inducing low blood sugar on any given day and that's it. It may seem extreme, but I felt better knowing that the poor registrar who would follow me would at least be able to get to my notes, inventory, and other major documents if I happened to be incapacitated.
Well then, wasn't this just a ray of sunshine? Sorry if this was more than you were after!
Cheers,
Tracey
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Tracey Berg-Fulton
Collections Database Associate
Carnegie Museum of Art
Pittsburgh PA
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