Loading summary
Transcript1 lines
- [00:00]
A
Sam, Welcome back to the and I the Power of One. Thanks for joining me again today. We're a little day late on this one and and generally just apologize for not being as consistent as I would want to be with the with some of the episodes been. We're kind of right in our crazy season both with travel but also chapter success training. I know a lot, I would say probably the majority if not close to all regions are going to be going through chapter success training, what we call it some of the regions might call it leadership training. With leadership transitions starting are going to affect October 1st. We start ours right now. So actually our first training is this week. We'll we'll have a few thousand members go through training. If you're in my region, you're hearing this today. Definitely attend. You know the first half of that is for every single person whether you're holding a role or not. So anyways, crazy. All good stuff but not as consistent and and for that I apologize. But we are back with questions and this one actually is the most recent one that came in. I'm putting it to the top of the line only because it's a little bit timely with the training that we're doing and it's all around medical leave. So it said please keep anonymous. Can you address medical or medical leaves of absences? Still a big question seems amongst chapters and so the answer is yes, we can address it. And and I can see and know and believe it is often it's not really even misunderstood as it's as it can be abused. And it's one of these things that when we train VPs and membership committees and it's good for all members to know is that the B and I policies are not personal. They just are not personal. They become personal when we start making exceptions to the policies, whether that's the medical leave, whether that's attendance, whatever policy that might be. And once we start going well it's okay for this person and not okay for that person. Now they become personal and the two areas you see this the most often are going to be in attendance when we start making excuses for people and why they can be late or why they can miss more meetings than other people can, blah blah blah and medical leaves. So I'm pulling it up right now just to give the full definition of it and then we can discuss it in more detail. So just give me a second here. Let's just go to my bni.com for those who are not using this website by the way, super helpful. It's mybni.com you have access to all of your resources that you would have access to. So that would include BNI Connect, BNI Academy. You have Ask Ivan on there. If you are at a higher level, you'll have things like BNI Insights, BNI plus is on there for chapters to use. Lots of great things on there for you to use. And I'm just typing in some stuff to pull it up. One single login, which is the best part about it. And it was one thing that we had been requesting for years and years and years and years and years. So mybni.com get used to using that as best you can. All right, so general policy for BNI talks about leaves of absence are possible for certain extenuating circumstances, I. E. Extended medical issues that prevents a member from working and are at the discretion of the Membership Committee. They can be used for personal health or family members if the member is a primary caregiver. So it is something that you request ahead of time to the Membership Committee for approval. Now, how long may a member be gone? Up to eight weeks. Weeks. Okay, up to eight weeks. So what is it for? It is for, hey, I know I'm going to have surgery and I'm going to be out of work for multiple weeks. The person I'm the primary caregiver for is going to have surgery or something is going to be out multiple weeks. Maternity leave would be another example of that. And it can be retroactive in extreme cases like, you know, I got into a car accident, now in the hospital for multiple weeks, like the Membership Committee can improve it going forward from that, but usually it's for the things that we know are coming up. You submit it to the Membership Committee, they approve it. Why is that important? Because what does a medical leave do? It holds your seat so that nobody can apply. None of your competition can apply and take your seat while you're out. It has no effect on things like attendance or power of one scores. I know in the Power of One, I don't know about the new traffic light one that's being used in some countries, but the Power of One report, it says if those weeks didn't exist. So there's no ill effect on your score or anything like that. And you're not required to even send a substitute for the attendance part. It's recommended. You do if you can, but if you don't have a sub, it's not an issue for that up to eight week period. So it's not for, hey, I woke up sick today. Or even, hey, I was super sick and I was in the hospital today. It's for extended leaves, right? So we saw this big time with COVID People would be missing a meeting because they got. They tested positive for Covid. That was usually a 10 day window, which meant you were missing one meeting. So there was no medical leave. It was. You were just absent that week. I woke up this morning, I tested positive for Covid. Too late to get a sub. Okay. That's why we have absences. That's why you're allowed three absences. The absences are more are four. I woke up sick, the kid was sick, the car didn't work, something very last minute. They're not for a. I just don't feel like going today. So I'm going to use an absence. That's. You can do that, but that's not what that's designed for. It's why we have a substitute program. Because if you know you're going to be absent because you have a sales meeting, you have a vacation conference, what have you, those are usually planned out in advance. You're not usually going on surprise vacations too often. And you can line somebody up to represent you. Medical is for the long term, I'm going to be completely out of work thing. Not just the week by week situation. You will have a time where you just wake up and you are deathly ill that week and you can't go to the B and I meeting and it happened the night before and you couldn't get a substitute. That's why we have absences. That's why you're allowed three of them. And in a rolling six month period, which is really lenient when you think about the fact that you have three of those. Plus if you follow most guidelines, up to three substitutes, that's six meetings in that six months that you're not there. That's pretty lenient policy. It's not a super strict policy. What happens is I always tell all of my membership committees, every member has the most amazing reason for their fourth absence. And it's not the fourth one that got them in trouble. Right. It's all the other ones that led up to it being the fourth one that now got them in trouble. So from a member standpoint, again, you don't want to be trying to abuse these things, but medical leave is for that. If it's going to be longer than eight weeks being deployed, I'm going to be out five months, I'm going to be out four months, whatever that might be. I actually Recommend that member drops and saves the time that they have remaining on their membership. Because what the member, what the medical leave doesn't do is freeze any time. So if you're out eight weeks, that's eight weeks of your membership time being used because again, you're locking out your competitor, you're saving your seat, all of those things, but your time doesn't stop. So if you went on medical leave with three months of membership and when you get back, you have four weeks left, right? If there's a normal 12 weeks, you would have four weeks left. You'd have to renew in the four weeks. If you are going to be longer than that, I'd recommend you drop and save your time. Does it opens your seat. So somebody could come in and take that seat and apply for it and the membership committee will have to make a decision on all that. But you're going to be out longer than eight weeks. You're, you're really. It might be in your best interest to do that. And the policy is written is they can approve up to eight weeks. So it's not, well, we're going to approve them for 20 weeks, right? Because then it's like, well, why'd they get 12 weeks and I only got eight? Why'd they get six when, you know what I mean? That's when it starts becoming personal again because we're making exceptions and different things. So recap. Again, what is the medical leave? I know I'm going to be out of commission for an extended period of time, whether it's me physically or somebody I'm taking care of that says I can't go to these meetings and go to work and all that kind of stuff. You submit it ahead of time, goes to the membership committee, they give the approval for it. When you're on medical leave, there is no negative effect of sense of, like attendance, power of one scores, those kind of things. It keeps your seat, your time keeps ticking. If it's, I just woke up really sick or I was, I was even in the hospital, I was so sick this week. That's what absences are for. If you went to the hospital this week and you realize now I'm going to be out an extended period of time, then you get. The membership committee can approve the medical leave for the extended period of time, right? You're out this week, that's the absence. But I'm going to be out. You know, listen, people have crazy things happen. They get into a car accident, they have a heart attack, some very last minute unplanned that is going to now keep them out for an extended period of time. Okay, I'm out. Give me the approval for the extended period of time. And none of this is an issue unless you're abusing the attendance piece. If you're, you know, using your absences just willy nilly because you just didn't feel like going that week, then you know, windows and times get tighter. But if you are using the absence of the way they're designed, that's what they're designed for. Those last minute unpredictable situations week to week like that extended medical as always, if you are running into a situation like this in a chapter and you're not really quite sure like how to answer a question or to do that's what BNI is there for is to help you with that. So reach out to your director consultant, reach out to your managing director, reach out to your executive director. Reach out to whomever in your region is in a position of leadership and they will be able to walk you through that scenario. Answer the questions, make sure you line it up right. It's not overly difficult, but even if it's a hey, does this qualify? You can get a real quick answer to again to ensure your chapter stays consistent with it, thus making it or keeping it from becoming personal. Hopefully this helps. As always, appreciate you all. For everybody going through chapter Success training, we're going to do a lot of probably different questions and topics around leadership these next few weeks. Congratulations to all of you. It's a really big deal. I know in our regions. We look forward to seeing you all at our training starting tomorrow. Have a great day. Sam.