As a supervisor, your role in managing employees’ leave comes into play when employees fail to follow procedures for requesting leave or when a request must be denied because the employee’s absence would disrupt the productivity of your department. When dealing with disciplinary issues related to leave, the most common violation I see is the employee’s failure to request leave in advance and in accordance with agency procedure. Grievances or equal employment opportunity claims might also be filed when an employee perceives his request is handled differently from other employees’ requests for leave. When an employee contests an action, a…

No matter how much you dislike it, your role as a manager sometimes requires you to take disciplinary action against an employee. The alternative — allowing some employees to disregard the rules — eventually hurts the performance of the agency as a whole. But when employees protest disciplinary actions taken against them — by appealing to the Merit Systems Protection Board or filing a union grievance — punishments are sometimes overturned because of managers’ errors during the disciplinary process. One of the most common mistakes made by managers is failing to identify all the reasons for selecting a certain punishment. In…