Employee with a clear pattern of Monday absences - how do I open this?
Anonymous HR Professional · 1 Jul 2026 · United Kingdom · Logistics · 501-1000 employees
Eleven of the last fourteen absence days fall on a Monday. Self-certified each time. I want to raise it without accusing anyone of anything, because there may well be something going on at home.
What they have tried
Line manager has mentioned it informally twice with no change.
Desired outcome
A fair way to open the conversation and what to record.
3 replies
Hold a return-to-work meeting after every single absence, no exceptions, and state the pattern factually: these are the dates, this is what I notice, is there anything affecting your attendance we should know about. The pattern conversation lands very differently when the process is applied to everybody.
Record what was said and agreed the same day. If this ends up in a formal process later, contemporaneous notes are the difference between a defensible decision and a claim.
Worth checking whether Monday is the shift nobody wants. We found a genuine scheduling cause when we looked at the rota rather than the person.
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