my employees’ juice cleanses are disrupting their work — Ask a Manager

A reader writes:

I manage a team of five. One of my staff, Helen, does some variation of a week-long juice cleanse or other liquid diet about once per year, and has for the four years she has been on my team. During that week each time, she arrives late or leaves early for three to four days due to headache, dizziness, or generally feeling crummy.

Helen is a highly reliable employee the rest of the year and rarely gets sick. It’s not a terribly busy time of year, and she finishes all required tasks in that week during her cleanse. As a result, I’ve never raised the issue, figuring “her body, her choice” as long as she gets the work done and/or notifies me that she will be using sick leave and needs someone to help out on a project.

This month, however, she wrangled another person on my team (Pearl) to join the cleanse, too. In the last four days, one or both of them have arrived late or left early every day due to some variant of feeling crummy. Pearl is less reliable and efficient than Helen, causing a slight backlog of tasks this week. They are trying to convince someone on the next team over that she should participate.

I worry about next year having multiple staff feeling poorly, at the same time, and intentionally. This seems different to me than when a nasty cold hits several people in the office over the course of two weeks—this is planned and synchronized.

I do not want to become the sick-leave police. But I also feel like these employees are not coming to work prepared to do their jobs, for several days in a row. Is there a reasonable way to approach this?

I answer this question over at Inc. today, where I’m revisiting letters that have been buried in the archives here from years ago (and sometimes updating/expanding my answers to them). You can read it here.