Q. "How do we address performance issues discovered during an employee's leave of absence without it seeming retaliatory for taking leave?"
Answer:
Taking disciplinary or corrective action following a leave of absence comes with additional risk, but there are a few steps you can take to help show that the actions are due to the performance issue and not the leave:
Document everthing.
This includes the initial errors, all conversations, any opportunities you offer them to improve and the timeline for improvement.
Be sure the issue is something you would discuss with any employee.
For instance, if this employee’s work was only checked because you were training the intern, but other employees never have their worked checked and may make the same number of undetected mistakes, consider whether you should just conduct additional training and/or implement audit procedures for all employees in this type of position instead of taking direct corrective action.
Start with basic corrective actions.
The more severe the discipline, the higher the risk the employee with jump to untrue conclusions. Making a good-faith effort to help the employee get back on track instead of jumping to termination helps to demonstrate the corrective action was not retaliatory.
Focus on the performance issues in relation to expectations.
Don’t propose reasons why the employee made the errors. Simply identify the error and explain why it’s a problem. If the employee says the error resulted from a disability, engage in the interactive process to see if there are ways you can help prevent similar future errors.
Nothing can completely prevent an employee from claiming corrective action was retaliatory, but these steps may help the employee see your actions as legitimate rather than retaliatory and create a documentation trail of the process.