When a Good Employee Becomes Unreliable

A manager wrote to me recently with this question, I've got an employee who joined our team last year, and she does a great job, but she calls off a lot. Each time is for a perfectly good reason. Her son was sick, then her furnace died, then her dad had a fall. You get the idea. She's a single mom like I was, so I want to be understanding and support her. I know how hard it is to juggle everything alone. She tries hard and she cares about doing a good job, but she's not reliable and it's creating a variety of issues on my team. Have any advice? Signed, Frustrated in Philly? Well, Frustrated, I do, in fact, have some advice. Here we go.