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Dealing with Sick Leave as a Matter of Policy
Hardly any manager can get through the year without
several team members taking a few days of paid sick leave to recover
from a hangover or go to a sporting event.
Studies have found it is a significant problem for small businesses.
In the UK, for example, one
third of all sick leave taken by employees is for reasons other than
ill-heath, costing the UK economy £4 billion a year, according to
a survey from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD).
The survey found that 94 percent of organizations consider sickness
absence a 'significant' or 'very significant' burden on their business.
Nearly half of employers see home and family responsibilities as a major
cause of non-health related absenteeism.
The US, a nation that is generally perceived as having a highly
productive workforce, is also faced with a high level of unscheduled
absenteeism. According to CCH Incorporated, a publisher of business
products, sick leave can cost up to an average of $602 per employee, per
year. This does not include indirect costs such as overtime pay for
other employees, hiring temps, missed deadlines, lost sales, sinking
morale and lower productivity.
A survey found that 72 cents of
every dollar of costs related to employee absence stems from lost
productivity, rather than hard costs, such as health care and disability
benefits.
And it is not just businesses in the UK and US that suffer. Mark Wooden
of the Australian National Institute of Labor Studies estimates that
during any given week, around 4.2 percent of the Australian workforce
would be absent from work for at least one day.
In 1995, the Australian Bureau of Statistics revealed that 10 percent of
employees questioned during a survey had taken sick leave, or a “sickie”,
within a two-week period.
Seven percent admitted they had taken sick leave for reasons other than
attending medical or dental appointments, or for ill health, physical
disability, or pregnancy – which is why sick leave is regarded as such a
problem.
The Kids Down Under website described the “sickie” as, “a paid day off
work, usually not due to illness” - in other words, an unofficial
holiday which takes advantage of the industrial awards system which
gives most full-time employees in Australia the right to paid leave for
illness.
So how should you deal with this as a manager?
Perhaps the best thing you can do if you believe your team members are
abusing sick leave entitlements, is to find out why.
If you’ve hired the right people for the work you do, it’s unlikely
they’re staying away due to lack of interest or from sheer laziness –
although the odd shirker can always slip through the recruitment
screening process.
It’s more likely that it comes down to one of the following issues:
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they are genuinely ill,
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they suffer from some form of intimidation or
abuse in the workplace,
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they have problems with their supervisors or
fellow team members,
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they feel overworked and incapable of coping, or
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they need to care for a sick child, partner or
relative
Expert on working relations, Glenn Weller, says that
poor working relations with a fellow team member, accompanied by abuse
or intimidation, is one of the major causes of workplace absenteeism.
Another major cause is care for a sick child, adult, or aged relative.
What can you do to reduce the amount of bogus sick leave taken by team
members?
Wooden suggests you stay away from “the time-honored but sure-to-fail”
method of reducing sick leave entitlements, and look at examples set by
more innovative workplaces which have introduced concepts such as
unlimited or needs-based sick leave.
He says six employers with such arrangements in place for over 12 months
all experienced a drop in the amount of sick leave taken by their
employees.
Some experts suggest paying new team members two days of sick leave when
they first join your company.
They will consider that as a windfall, however, when they take their
first two days of [actual] sick leave entitlement, they will not be
paid. This could work as a real incentive for team members not to abuse
sick leave entitlements.
Perhaps a better answer is to
look at the problem sympathetically and pro-actively.
If team members are staying away due to conflict with supervisors or
fellow team members, try to find out the underlying cause of that
conflict and resolve it.
If they’re taking days off because they feel overworked and unable to
cope, why not see if the workload could be more evenly distributed?
Perhaps you need more people to handle it? Bear in mind, also, that a
stressed-out team member can easily become physically ill.
If team members are staying away to care for sick children, partners, or
relatives, perhaps you can find a way to incorporate their caring duties
into working hours by allowing them to work reduced hours from home.
However, if it comes down to just laziness or lack of interest, you’ll
probably need to give the responsible team members a warning and a
chance to “pull up their socks”.
Whatever you do, try to find and
tackle the cause of the problem rather than the symptoms.
Employers who have done this appear to have had more success at reducing
the abuse of sick leave than those who simply sought to reduce sick
leave entitlements and punish the “shirkers”.
Employees are generally unlikely to take their jobs for granted, and
even more unlikely to deliberately do anything that would jeopardize
them.
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