A re­cent news sto­ry sug­gest­ed that some se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers have re­ceived mem­os telling them to use up their ac­crued va­ca­tion leave. One of­fi­cer in ques­tion was re­port­ed­ly told to use up 773 days of leave.

If ac­cu­rate, that would mean over two years away from work if count­ed as con­tin­u­ous days or over three years if based on a five-day work­ing week.

The specifics of each of­fi­cer, and whether the re­port­ed mem­os were in­deed cir­cu­lat­ed, are the sideshows of a much big­ger prob­lem in our pub­lic sec­tor: the mis­man­age­ment of some­thing as sim­ple as staff va­ca­tions.

This is­sue comes up reg­u­lar­ly, usu­al­ly in­volv­ing se­nior pub­lic ser­vants to­wards the end of their ca­reers, who in prac­tice leave the post ear­li­er and on full salary for, some­times, years. Or are paid the equiv­a­lent in cash, ef­fec­tive­ly earn­ing a big lump sum ahead of re­tire­ment.

The prob­lem with this bad habit in the pub­lic sec­tor is that it is based on a mis­un­der­stand­ing of what va­ca­tion leave is for and the chron­ic mis­man­age­ment of its staff. On top of that, it al­so helps cre­ate a dan­ger­ous fi­nan­cial black hole in the Gov­ern­ment’s ac­counts.

First, the mis­un­der­stand­ing.

We must be grate­ful to past labour lead­ers who fought hard to en­sure em­ploy­ees were en­ti­tled to a min­i­mum set of rest days–the reg­u­lar type, like week­ends, as well as va­ca­tion leave, for a ‘prop­er’ longer rest and time with the fam­i­ly.

This right comes from the sound prin­ci­ple that, as hu­man be­ings, we need time to rest and recharge–a good thing for both em­ploy­ees and em­ploy­ers.

Thus, ac­cu­mu­lat­ing un­tak­en leave over the years makes no sense what­so­ev­er as go­ing off in one big lump lat­er in some­one’s ca­reer doesn’t re­place the need to rest and recharge on an an­nu­al ba­sis.

So much so that, in some coun­tries, em­ploy­ment tri­bunals will not force the pay­ment of un­tak­en leave ac­cu­mu­lat­ed over many years as the law sees them as some­thing that laps­es over time and can­not be ac­crued.

And, in many coun­tries, em­ploy­ment con­tracts are clear: as far as va­ca­tion leave is con­cerned, use it or lose it.

This is even more crit­i­cal for pres­sured roles such as po­lice of­fi­cers, fire­fight­ers, health work­ers, etc. They should be tak­ing their rest days to en­sure they are in a good state of health and mind to do the work.

This takes us to the mis­man­age­ment point.

Es­pe­cial­ly giv­en oth­er ways to take time off work in the pub­lic sec­tor, many may be able to strike a rea­son­able work-life bal­ance with­out hav­ing to tap heav­i­ly in­to their va­ca­tion leave en­ti­tle­ment for the wrong rea­sons, such as by abus­ing their sick days ‘en­ti­tle­ment’.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, they may be able to build ac­crued rest days by do­ing ex­tra work through­out the year and get­ting days off in lieu of cash pay­ments.

But all of this hap­pens due to a sim­ple rea­son: mis­man­age­ment.

Good su­per­vi­sors man­age their di­rect re­ports’ time prop­er­ly, in­clud­ing whether they are tak­ing their leave days with­in the year, man­ag­ing their off-du­ty days prop­er­ly and op­er­at­ing with­in both the terms and the spir­it of their con­tracts.

The prob­lem with our pub­lic sec­tor is that prop­er staff su­per­vi­sion is a rare thing, lead­ing to high­er than ac­cept­able lev­els of ab­sen­teeism, poor pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and, in this case, a lack of man­age­ment of staff’s rest days.

Some will ar­gue that the rea­son many state em­ploy­ees end up with such high lev­els of ac­crued va­ca­tion leave is due to chron­ic short staffing in crit­i­cal ar­eas, mak­ing it vir­tu­al­ly im­pos­si­ble for man­agers to au­tho­rise leave with­in a giv­en year.

Yes and no.

It may be the case that low staffing lev­els add to the pres­sure, es­pe­cial­ly in crit­i­cal roles, but if this is­sue does ex­ist, it will still be there when staff go on leave for months or even years lat­er in their ca­reers.

And even if staffing lev­els play a part, mis­man­age­ment is al­so to blame, be it for poor plan­ning, poor man­age­ment of ab­sen­teeism and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, or the poor han­dling of leave by pre­vi­ous man­agers.

It is even more galling to see that, of­ten, those en­joy­ing a long break due to ac­crued va­ca­tion leave are some of the most se­nior pub­lic ser­vants, in­clud­ing per­ma­nent sec­re­taries and, in the past, even act­ing po­lice chiefs.

That al­so means that the costs are high­er as the days they ac­cu­mu­late dur­ing their more ju­nior years are paid on­ly when they are earn­ing the high­est salaries and al­lowances in the pub­lic sec­tor.

And this takes us to the ac­count­ing is­sue.

It would be il­lu­mi­nat­ing to find out how much in cash terms the gov­ern­ment of T&T owes its em­ploy­ees in ac­crued va­ca­tion leave.

Just like the vast sums of VAT re­funds it owes, this doesn’t ap­pear in the state’s books. But it should (in both cas­es and oth­ers).

In oth­er words, we ought to know what is the size of the bill that would fall on our laps should the State have to pay all out­stand­ing va­ca­tion leave in one go. And, by hav­ing that fig­ure in each de­part­ment’s ac­counts, it would be eas­i­er to hold man­agers to ac­count for the mis­man­age­ment of va­ca­tion leave in their ar­eas.

The fact is that, by kick­ing the is­sue down the road, cur­rent man­agers al­so kick the fi­nan­cial hit down the road in the hope that the prob­lem will blow up when they are long gone (or when they are en­joy­ing their own long va­ca­tion leave ahead of re­tire­ment).

This needs fix­ing and, al­though of­ten silent on the mat­ter, this is a theme our labour lead­ers should em­brace as tack­ling the prob­lem is good for their mem­bers and al­so good for the na­tion.

By do­ing so, they will help state em­ploy­ees have their rest days when it mat­ters most, whilst help­ing us all have a prop­er­ly man­aged pub­lic ser­vice.

That would be a lot more sen­si­ble.