Background
Employees are expected to maintain their assigned schedule and must make every effort to avoid unscheduled absences. Circumstances can arise that cause employees to miss work unexpectedly. However, when unscheduled days off are excessive, it can negatively impact the work environment and decrease productivity. While Postal Service employees are entitled to use their leave, management is responsible for administering the leave program by considering the needs of the Postal Service as well as the welfare of the individual employee. Employee availability refers to the percentage of normally scheduled hours actually worked by employees. Overall, the Postal Service’s employee availability trended downward from 84.4 percent in fiscal year (FY) 2020 to 82.8 percent in FY 2023.
What We Did
Our objective was to evaluate how the Postal Service manages employee availability. For this audit, we visited and interviewed personnel at 17 judgmentally selected Postal Service facilities to gain an understanding of their leave approval and denial process, relevant training, handling of leave abuse, monitoring of employee availability initiatives, and employees who are on the payroll but do not have any workhours. Also, we validated the supporting documentation for a statistical sample of 400 regular sick leave occurrences of more than three days between FY 2020 and FY 2023, from 40 randomly selected Postal Service facilities nationwide.
What We Found
Opportunities exist for management to improve employee availability. Specifically, management did not always: (1) take progressive corrective action on employees with attendance issues, (2) address employees with zero workhours in several pay periods, or (3) obtain supporting medical documentation for sick leave greater than three days. The Postal Service incurred about $120 million annually in unsupported questioned costs for not obtaining required medical documentation to validate employees’ use of sick leave.
Recommendations and Management’s Comments
We made three recommendations to address the issues identified in the report. Postal Service management agreed with all recommendations, and the Office of Inspector General (OIG) considers management’s comments responsive, as corrective actions should resolve the issues identified. Management’s comments and our evaluation are at the end of each finding and recommendation.