Our people are trained that if someone does start to talk about their family during an interview, they are to try to change the subject as quickly as possible because of the laws and potential for bias. EVEN if they volunteer the information.

My department is a family friendly department. They also fully believe in using all of your CTO (Combined Time Off). Since it's a sick/vacation bank combined, everybody has their time and can use their time. It's to your advantage to not have to call in last minute because everybody would rather use their time as planned time off. As long as you notify your supervisor more than an hour in advance of your start time, it is considered planned. So, if I email my boss at 6:30 am (with an 8:00 am start time) to let him know I won't be in, it's planned time off. Not a bad gig, I must say :)

When I used to work at a credit union, this is what we had, but we called it Paid Time Off, and we earned 6 hours of PTO every 2 weeks. Took forever to build up and not very long to use it up :( The difference with us is if it was less than TWO WEEKS notice, it was considered UNplanned. I HATED that place. Ugh.

Now, I work at a FABULOUS place that operates under the "if you're sick, you're sick - don't bring your sick butt to work and get the rest of us sick." It's recorded how often we are sick, and if we have less than 4 sick days a year, we earn extra vacation days for the next year. Our vacation days do not have to be used for doctors appointments, unless we want it's going to be a LONG day of appt. Every doc appt I've had, I've taken an extended lunch period and worked late.

I have the best job in the world. :D

I should add that I work for a huge company. The amount of time you have to notify your supervisor in advance is set by the management in individual departments. My department is one of the most lenient but that's because we're not a patient care area. Patient care areas are much more strict, but then again, they can request specific days to work every schedule so they have more flexibility.