The absentee boss

Egay Uy .

ALISON Green, is a blogger who writes “Ask a Manager” where she dispenses advice on career, job search, and management issues.  She is also the author of “Managing to Change the World: The Nonprofit Leader’s Guide to Getting Results, and former chief of staff of a successful non-profit organization.  One of her articles “How to Deal with an Absent Boss” caught my attention because it sounds familiar.

In her blog, Ms. Green said an employee wrote:  “Our department suffers from absenteeism and by boss is one of the biggest offenders.  She just called in sick again today.  Her habit of calling in sick regularly means that the staff in our department fell entitled to do the same….”

Ms. Green’s response to that problem was – “I think you did the right thing by attempting to alert your boss’s boss.  But now that he has that information, there not much else you can do.  It’s possible that he is taking more action that you realize…

“But assuming the problem continues, you can conclude that either he doesn’t care or is more concerned with avoiding awkward conversations than with managing well and holding people to a high bar. In that case, your option are to (a) resign yourself to working somewhere poorly managed, or (b) leave and find yourself a boss who is willing to do her job. (I have a bias toward B, but there may be reasons for accepting (A).”

My personal take on this is that if the head of office is one who is made by the job, not one who makes the job, then the organization will almost always fail in its pursuits.  This would be aggravated when the consistently-absent boss plays favorites among a clique group in the organization.  Worse, if that group includes a sibling.

A boss may consistently be absent, more remarkably on Mondays and after off-hour activities (as if making up for extra hours spent on the job and for personal matters), because of incompetence or simply indifference to what his actions or inactions could result in.

It may be unimaginable for a boss who frequently absents himself from the job that demands exactly the opposite.  What does that do to the organization?  Your thoughts are as good as mine:  the organization will constantly fail to deliver what are expected of it.  And worse, if the organization is a public office hence expected to deliver the service according to its commitment or “contract” with the taxpayers.  So wonder no more if the organization of that boss always fails in its endeavors.

To make matters worse, absences of the boss may even be unaccounted for.  Well, that deserves to be dug deeper.

(Egay Uy is a lawyer. He chairs the City’s Regulatory and Complaint Board, co-chairs with the city mayor the City Price Coordinating Council, and chairs the city’s Joint Inspection Team.  He retired as a vice president of Cepalco.)