When to tell boss about upcoming surgery and medical leave?

October 13, 2022 7:26 AM

I am now officially on the list for a fairly major, medically-necessary surgery that will happen in about 3 months time. It's going to require 6-8 weeks of medical leave and a graduated return to work after that. However, I won't have an exact date until about a month before the surgery, and I'm trying to figure out when to tell my boss and team at work.

I work for a large company with very established HR procedures around things like medical leave and short term disability, so those details are already dealt with for the most part; it's just paperwork to be done but it can't be started until I have the surgery date. That's fine. But I'm struggling with when to tell my boss. Do I do it now, and give him and the team as much notice as possible to prepare for my absence? Or do I wait until I have more defined timeline? And when do I tell my team? What are the downsides of waiting in this scenario?

Possibly unrelated, but the details of the surgery sound much scarier than they are, so I'm not keen to share them and then be forced to deal with other people's reactions (brain surgery OMG!) although usually, I'm pretty open about such things. That said, there is also a non-zero risk things could go quite badly and I don't want to talk about that either. Obviously, my medical situation is no one else's business, but I've been pretty casual about this in the past, and it feels weird to be quiet now.

Have you dealt with a similar situation before? How did you handle it? Would you handle it differently this time around?

posted by cgg to Work & Money (9 answers total)

I'd notify once you have the date. Go through HR and let them know with your concern with managing other's reactions.
posted by heathrowga at 7:50 AM on October 13, 2022 [7 favorites]

If you generally find your boss to be a reasonable person who will work with you to solve issues, then I'd say something now or at least soon-ish. If you can be proactively working together to document and cross-train and adjust work assignments, you can make your absence easier on everyone and more importantly easy on you, with no one calling you in a crisis while you're off. Especially if it makes sense to do something like hiring a temp, the more lead time on that, the better.

But if you've got a shitty boss who's going to deny you opportunities for advancement or growth because "you're going on leave soon anyway", or if waiting a bit lets you get through a big deadline or raise cycle without this affecting anyone's perception of you, then by all means, wait.

Once you do tell your boss, I'd tell the team soon after. Otherwise there's too much chance the information slips inadvertently when someone notices shifts in your workload or a new temp hired for a mysterious reason, and it becomes a Weird Hush Hush thing instead of just a matter of fact "hey, I'm going to be out for a medical leave in January, I'm working with Boss on figuring out the logistics of coverage" discussion.
posted by Stacey at 7:52 AM on October 13, 2022 [15 favorites]

Notify when you have the date and can go through all the appropriate paperwork even if you trust your supervisor. I recently had a small surgery that required me to take a week off to recover. I reached out to HR about if I needed to do anything special since I would just use sick leave. The HR benefits manager all but forced me to file FMLA- why? About 12 people were notified that they were being let go while I was out.

While it might be “nice” to give your team a heads up, you being out is a business issue and needs to be treated as such. Your not a slacker or a bad employee for needing to take medical leave and your colleagues aren’t owed anything because of it.

As to the nature of the procedure, if you can just say matter of factly, “I’ll be out X date to X date and hope to return on X date following recovery from a medical procedure” that shouldn’t invite anymore questions. If you volunteer “brain surgery” they’re going to start discussions on what they saw on Grey’s. My recently procedure was fun related and I was not going to be talking about it with coworkers (even though I work at a reproductive health org!). If people ask more questions, just respond with a “oh, hmmm, interesting question. Why do you ask?” (And sometimes it’s because they are wrong footed but we’ll meaning and their uncle just had positive results from a similar thing, or they want to know if they could drop off a meal to you etc. And sometimes they’re just being nosy)
posted by raccoon409 at 9:02 AM on October 13, 2022 [1 favorite]

Stacey hits it on the head. Now if you are well-established in a decently functioning organization; later if you need to protect yourself from vindictiveness.
posted by RajahKing at 9:40 AM on October 13, 2022 [1 favorite]

I'm a senior manager at a large, multinational company based in the USA that has established HR procedures for large medical leaves. If you're not in the USA, as your profile says you aren't, different laws will apply but I would generally take the same approach.

My conversations with HR about a similar upcoming leave (though much less major -- will require ~2 weeks of recuperation) for one of my reports boiled down to "You need to support your report and don't have any authority to deny it once they go through the appropriate approval channels for medical leaves." Not that I wouldn't have supported them anyway, but your manager is unlikely to be in a position where they can influence the timing or duration of the leave that you take -- that's between you, your medical care team, and the company's HR department/long-term disability coverage. I haven't asked about what the procedure they're having is, because it's none of my business; you do not have to volunteer it if you don't want to. "I will be out on medical leave from X to Y" is a complete sentence.

As a manager, it is much better for me to know in advance if one of my team members is going to be out for an extended period of time. For example: if one of my reports told me that they were going to take two months off for any reason with only a week's notice, I would be pretty unhappy with them: not because they were taking the leave, but because I would have to rearrange the work that we had expected them to do without much notice. In general, I think a good rule of thumb is that you should let your manager know in advance by approximately the amount of time you'll be taking off before you take it. So if you're taking a week off, you can let them know a week before. If you're taking a month off, better to give them a month to prepare.

A best practice for any pre-planned long leave (medical or otherwise) is to write up a handoff document: include the dates you'll be out; the work you're currently doing, and whether you will complete it, hand it off, or drop it before you go out; any points of contact/escalation for things you typically handle; and (this is critical) get signoff from your manager in the document before you go out so that it's clear that you have both agreed. This document serves two purposes: it establishes clear expectations about what you will and won't do prior to the leave, and it covers your (and your manager's) ass when it comes time for performance conversations. Your manager saying "cgg was out on leave for X period and this is the document they used to prepare" is much better than "cgg didn't complete Q R and X projects in Q4 (because I forgot to prepare for the leave)." I've used this process for my own long vacations (6 weeks), parental leaves (13 weeks for both of them), and have had reports use it for medical leave, parental leave, and vacation. It's a really powerful tool to ensure that expectations are crystal clear and prevent misunderstandings.

Good luck to you!
posted by kdar at 9:52 AM on October 13, 2022 [4 favorites]

I'm a project manager and obviously from my perspective the more notice the better. An employee felt comfortable telling me and the team that they were planning on retiring next summer and I appreciated both the notice and the vote of confidence that they didn't feel they would be sidelined or otherwise suffer negative consequences. But we are in an organization that rarely lays people off and highly values each employee as an individual.

Unless I was certain that there were no chances for either informal repercussions from your immediate supervisor(s) or HR, I would wait until you have a confirmed date. A big part of management's job is to make sure there's no "bus problem", and to hit deliverables despite staffing issues. If you were taking a new job 2 weeks would be typical, and then you'd be gone for good! A month is enough to re-assess project priorities, transfer staffing if needed, and ramp up any new people to take over from you on a temporary basis. You can tell your management, truthfully, that you didn't know what the date was.
posted by wnissen at 9:52 AM on October 13, 2022 [1 favorite]

Definitely don't tell your manager any details about the procedure or possible (if unlikely) outcomes. I've had way too many managers tell me about my coworkers' personal problems that I shouldn't know about, and vice versa.
posted by meowzilla at 11:29 AM on October 13, 2022 [1 favorite]

Tell your manager when you have a date. They can plan from there. Also, keep in mind that timing may change on the hospital's end. In my recent experience, it is becoming more common for non-emergency procedures to be delayed and rescheduled.
posted by fies at 1:32 PM on October 13, 2022 [1 favorite]

I'm in the US and will be having a major surgery with 6 weeks off if everything goes according to plan. Because I need US based FMLA and I need to be at my current job for one year to receive it my boss is getting about 5 weeks notice even though there is already a date. I don't think 5 weeks is terrible, but I would give probobly around 2 months if I could bc it gives them more time to look into assigning a part time or temporary help for my position until I return.
posted by AlexiaSky at 11:14 AM on October 14, 2022