This is one of two questions: 1) why don’t they understand the policy or 2) why don’t they respect it?

Do you have an HR employee you can talk to? Is it possible for you to refuse to grant paid sick leave or impose other punishments if you're not given sufficient notice, violating the policy?

Are they calling in sick and having doctor certs, or is this general leave-taking as well?

@SolarMike The policy is black and white. So am leaning towards the latter.

@nick012000 Sadly we have minimal HR available. Sick leave is paid under all circumstances (IIRC can only be refused if fails to provide medical certificate). I am interested in learning what positive punishments can be introduced

When you tell them that they were supposed to give 24 hours of notice, what do they say? Also, when you say, "..at least 4 of them randomly messaging me...", do you mean it's the same 4 or so employees calling late or that it's a random group of 4?

@mxyzplk-SEstopbeingevil Both.

Are the employees failing to give sick notice casuals or permanent? Do you have the power to fire them and hire replacements?

Would you rather people come in sick? Is it an option to routinely plan in an extra “on call” person, in case someone gets sick? What do you do when someone needs to leave during their shift?

How does your policy handle people who feel fine in the evening and then wake up feeling awful? I can't remember the last time I realized 24 hours in advance that I was going to be sick. Also, if I get sick during the week it is impossible to both give 24 hours advance notice AND not be at work sick, since I work every day. How does this policy work out during weekdays?

@AsheraH Absolutely not. People should get rest/medical supervision. An extra person routinely is cost prohibitive. If its during the day its slightly easier - as I can jump in to maintain the ratio while the agency arranges a casual. Sometimes children leave early, so they can be moved into rooms - so as to maintain the educator/child ratio. We dont yet have granular BCP where we have accounted for all the staff falling sick, amongst other things.

This is more about the manager being "agile" and finding a solution at short notice, which is a situation that is normal and has to be covered.

@Erik you are 100% right. People can get sick anytime. I think one of the questions I am trying to find an answer to is how do I handle running the center. Staff sick, not enough time to call in casuals.

On how many days in the year do you have a sick person? Is this a once-a-month thing, or a twice-a-week thing?

@SolarMike I am leaning towards agreeing with you. I think my inability of being able to call in replacements is making me lean the other way. How can a manager be agile if the staff call in sick and there is not enough time to find replacement

@Erik It happens 3 times a week - randomly. There are a few "repeat offenders". So just randomly I need to find 4 to 5 people to work - which is proving to be very very difficult

Wait, you have 20 staff and then 4 of them calling in sick routinely on the same day? That sounds statistically unlikely unless there's something weird going on with these people.

Are you possibly mixing up the policies for normal leave and sick leave? Most places I know have a policy for scheduled leave requiring you to inform your employer a number of days in advance, relative to the length of your leave, i.e. at least two weeks in advance for two weeks off, 24h for a day or two. On the other hand, for unscheduled things, like sick leave or a family emergency, the rule usually is: let us know as soon as you know and at least before you were supposed to start working.

This is a ridicolous policy: Employees are supposed to come to work sick, if they have less than 24 hours before their shift starts?

@Erik, it doesn't seem necessarily unlikely for 4/20 staff who work together in childcare to all feel ill on the same day, since if we are talking about infectious disease, it's very credible that multiple people are exposed to the carrier at once. Moreover, someone who feels ill as early as Friday night clearly isn't going to ring in sick until they've found they still feel ill through Sunday, so it doesn't necessarily follow that the sickness is coming to fruition all at once, only that staff finally face the ultimatum on Sunday evening to report the sickness and register their absence.

@Steve Not really. Your argument is semi valid - but if a number of people are statistically showing up, it is THEM being the problem, not the sickness. This would affect more people because children do also not get sick suddenly and repeatedly. There definitely seem, from the numbers, to be some quite bad and spoiled apples under the staff.

This doesn't make sense. How many sick leaves can they take? And do they take sick leave every week? Do they have regular leaves?

Yeah doesn't it say they have "10 days of sick leave?" None of this adds up.