Helpdesk Consultant Absences and Tardiness

Reporting for your entire scheduled Helpdesk shift is a significant responsibility. The students, faculty, and staff at Saint Mary's College are depending on you to be available to them, answering their questions and making sure that their computer needs are addressed (this includes walking them through solutions to their technical questions, entering all contacts into the Tracking System, providing hands-on technical support as needed, and referring them to other Information technology staff as necessary).

Procedure for an excused absence for a Helpdesk shift

1. If you are unable to attend a Helpdesk shift, e-mail hdcs@saintmarys.edu in advance to request a substitute. Even if you find a substitute, you are still responsible for covering that shift, so make sure your substitute actually shows up!
2. If you are unable to find a substitute after posting once to hdcs@saintmarys.edu in advance to request a substitute, post again.
3. If you are still unable to find a substitute after posting to hdcs@saintmarys.edu in advance to request a substitute, please e-mail the Helpdesk Student Manager and the Helpdesk supervisor to notify them that you posted twice to hdcs@saintmarys.edu and were unable to find a substitute and will need to miss your shift. (If you do not e-mail both the Helpdesk Student Manager and the Helpdesk supervisor, your absence may be recorded as an unexcused one.)
4. Absences will be excused for academic conflicts and due to illness. Absences for non-academic reasons may or may not be excused, depending on the individual circumstances. (An absence because you are leaving early for a break is an example of an absence that will not be excused unless a substitute for the shift is arranged.)
5. The reason that you should also both the Helpdesk Student Manager and the Helpdesk supervisor is that one of them may be able to fill in as a substitute for your shift, depending on her availability.

   Note: If you are looking for a substitute because of illness, one request for a substitute is acceptable before contacting the Helpdesk Student Manager and the Helpdesk supervisor. Excused absences for emergencies are reviewed on a case-by-case basis by the Helpdesk supervisor.

Please make sure to post on the HDCs listserv to request a sub or privately e-mail the Helpdesk Student Manager and the Helpdesk supervisor to notify them that you will be having a substitute for your shift. Failure to do so will result in the Helpdesk supervisor assuming that you have skipped a scheduled Helpdesk shift.

Unexcused absences for a Helpdesk shift

• If you do not attend your scheduled Helpdesk shift, do not have a substitute, and did not follow the procedures listed above, your absence will be recorded as unexcused.
• Absences will be excused for academic conflicts and due to illness. Absences for non-academic reasons may or may not be excused, depending on the individual circumstances. (An absence because you are leaving early for a break is an example of an absence that will not be excused unless a substitute for the shift is arranged.)
• According to the 2006-2007 Financial Aid Student Employment Policies (you were provided with a version of these policies during your First Year Orientation), "failure to report for scheduled work" can result in probation.
• The policy for Helpdesk Consultants follows a "three-strike" rule:
  1. The first unexcused absence for a scheduled Helpdesk shift or scheduled Helpdesk meeting will result in a warning (verbal, e-mail, or letter from the Helpdesk supervisor). Depending upon the absence (such a mandatory Helpdesk Consultant meeting), a copy of a written warning may be sent to Financial Aid to be kept in your work record at Saint Mary's College.
  2. The second unexcused absence for a scheduled Helpdesk shift or scheduled Helpdesk meeting will result in a written warning from the Helpdesk supervisor. A copy of this written warning will be sent to Financial Aid to be kept in your work record at Saint Mary's College. You will also be on probation as a Helpdesk Consultant (the length of probation will be determined on a case-by-case basis).
  3. The third unexcused absence for a scheduled Helpdesk shift or scheduled Helpdesk meeting will result in dismissal as a Helpdesk Consultant. You will receive a written letter from the Helpdesk supervisor with an explanation of the dismissal, and a copy of this letter will be sent to Financial Aid to be kept in your work record at Saint Mary's College.
  4. On rare occasions, there may be cases where immediate dismissal of a Helpdesk Consultant is necessary. These cases will be determined by the Helpdesk supervisor in consultation with staff members of Information Technology and Financial Aid.

Procedure if you need to leave before the end of your shift due to an emergency

1. Send an e-mail to the Helpdesk supervisor or call her at x5329 (and leave a voicemail message if she is not there) to let her know you are leaving your cluster shift due to an emergency. You may also send her a message over AOL IM.
2. Within 24 hours (the amount of time is flexible depending on the emergency), please e-mail the Helpdesk supervisor (khausman@saintmarys.edu) a detailed explanation for why you were unable to work your entire scheduled shift. (If you do not e-mail her with an explanation of your absence, your absence may be recorded as an unexcused one. This is required so there is a written record of your absence. AOL IMs do not count.)

   Emergencies include sudden illness, deaths in your family, and other College-approved emergencies. Emergencies do not include giving friends a ride to the mall, needing to work on a project, or catching a plane to fly home for break.

Tardiness and "Excessively Late"

"To be early is to be on time, to be on time is to be late."

This was a favorite quote of my band teacher, and he used it to refer both to attendance and to music. If your shift is scheduled to start on the hour, that means it starts on the hour. It doesn't mean you breeze in a minute or two after the hour, then take off your coat, then log in to the computer, then get ready to work.

Please be at your shift READY TO WORK when you are scheduled to be there (and stay there until your shift has ended). If you don't know what clock we're following, use the one that is on the computer or on the telephone. The computers and telephones are all tied to the same network time server, and the "official" time I use is the one the network time server tells me.

If you have a computer in your room, you can set it to use a network time server to make sure you're on the same time I am. I use Apple's network time server (time.apple.com).

Disciplinary action will taken when consultants are "excessively late" to their shift in the past. If a consultant is more than five minutes late clocking into TimeClock, it will be considered "excessively late."

Being "excessively late" would result in disciplinary action, and will follow the same disciplinary actions as unexcused absences. The first time will result in a warning, the second will result in probation, and the third will result in termination as a cluster consultant.

One of my responsibilities as your supervisor is to prepare you with skills to work in the "real world." I feel that one of the most important parts of that is to instill a sense of personal responsibility and accountability into each of you. When you leave Saint Mary's, you'll be expected to handle a lot of responsibilities you haven't yet encountered. For education majors, you'll have a classroom full of little students that will look up to you and be dependant on you; for nursing majors, you'll have sick people depending on you to help make them well, and in some cases they'll be putting their life in your hands; for business majors, you may face a situation where millions of dollars are at stake; for other majors, a variety of other situations will take place where you'll be expected to take charge and help resolve the situation to the best of your ability.

Being on time to your shift is a small step towards those responsibilities, but students, faculty, and staff are already depending on you to be available to help them with their computer problems, and you need to be there for them now just as you'll be there for others in the future.

Last modified: August 13, 2007