Sickness policy

TELLIT01

elsien wrote: »

The thing to remember is that it's instances of sickeness - so one day or one week would count as one instance.

Where I worked it was a total of 4 periods of absence, or a total of 8 days, whichever was the lower. So 4 x 1 day would trigger action as would 1 period of 8 days. I think that is more common than the way described by elsien.

Arewethereyet

Thanks for your responses. Where I used to work there was no sickness policy. The staff were generally trusted not to take advantage and the attitude was 'you can't help being ill'.

I'm not generally sick often. I once went a couple of years without one day off, but once I had a year where I had to have 18 days off!

It irks me because it gives the impression of a company that lacks compassion and doesn't really care about it's employees.

Maybe I'm just getting soft in my old age!

Does the type of business make a difference? In my student days I once did some temp work in a factory and there was the culture of pulling a sickie if you could get away with it, but I've never really come across that in my career in a professional office - maybe I'm just being naive!

elsien

TELLIT01 wrote: »

Where I worked it was a total of 4 periods of absence, or a total of 8 days, whichever was the lower. So 4 x 1 day would trigger action as would 1 period of 8 days. I think that is more common than the way described by elsien.

That sounds fairer. It used to seriously annoy me that one persistent offender I managed used to have a couple of weeks at a time and it counted the same as someone with one day. I kept telling HR it was ridiculous but they kept getting away with it.

IAmWales

Arewethereyet wrote: »

Thanks for your responses. Where I used to work there was no sickness policy. The staff were generally trusted not to take advantage and the attitude was 'you can't help being ill'.

I'm not generally sick often. I once went a couple of years without one day off, but once I had a year where I had to have 18 days off!

It irks me because it gives the impression of a company that lacks compassion and doesn't really care about it's employees.

Maybe I'm just getting soft in my old age!

Does the type of business make a difference? In my student days I once did some temp work in a factory and there was the culture of pulling a sickie if you could get away with it, but I've never really come across that in my career in a professional office - maybe I'm just being naive!

It is setting clear guidelines/ boundaries for employees, and ensures consistency. Management still have discretion but the employee is in no doubt that three absences for colds, D&V etc will trigger the absence management procedure.

It's not about lack of compassion, it's about running a business.

Takeaway_Addict

Arewethereyet wrote: »

Thanks for your responses. Where I used to work there was no sickness policy. The staff were generally trusted not to take advantage and the attitude was 'you can't help being ill'.

I'm not generally sick often. I once went a couple of years without one day off, but once I had a year where I had to have 18 days off!

It irks me because it gives the impression of a company that lacks compassion and doesn't really care about it's employees.

Maybe I'm just getting soft in my old age!

Does the type of business make a difference? In my student days I once did some temp work in a factory and there was the culture of pulling a sickie if you could get away with it, but I've never really come across that in my career in a professional office - maybe I'm just being naive!

Actually alot of the rigidness has come in due to employment law and employers getting into trouble for discriminating against some staff allowing greater flexibility compared to others.

As such, one rule to fit all tends to be more common.

It isn't harsh though to answer your question

sangie595

Takeaway_Addict wrote: »

Actually alot of the rigidness has come in due to employment law and employers getting into trouble for discriminating against some staff allowing greater flexibility compared to others.

As such, one rule to fit all tends to be more common.

It isn't harsh though to answer your question

^^^ This ^^^

Employers might be "more flexible" - if they are they are opening a huge can of worms that will come back to haunt them. The entire purpose of such policies is to demonstrate that there is no favouritism, that everyone is treated equally, and that the same situation is applicable to all employees. The only exception to this may be some allowance for disability. If an employer give latitude for any other reason, no matter how understandable the reason, they may as well tear up their policy, because it will be worthless as a defence at a tribunal. Who decides that the death of granny is worth more days off sick than repeated bouts of flu? Why does Jane get 12 days because her manager "understands" and Tony gets the standard 9? The minute that discretion is introduced the policy is nothing more than an aspiration, not a target. The exception being that some employers have a short term policy and a long term policy, so that people who have lengthy sick leave - for example, a more serious condition or post-operative recovery are treated differently.

Planet_Switzerland

I place I worked at had something called the Bradford Factor which was a score calculated from number of days and number of instances off sick. When you reached a certain score you no longer got sick pay, and it didn't take much to reach it.


The result was you had people turn up who were clearly too ill to be at work and were no use to anybody, but couldn't afford to lose a days pay. They were probably making other people in the office ill too.


Fortunately I never had to take any time off sick when I was there, but it was a terrible place to work.

PasturesNew

Arewethereyet wrote: »

I'm not generally sick often. I once went a couple of years without one day off, but once I had a year where I had to have 18 days off!

It's all about comparisons .... in about 30 years of working I've probably had 3-4 days off sick in total ... one of which I'll have lied about as I had been out clubbing and simply couldn't face getting up ....

Undervalued

Arewethereyet wrote: »

I'm not generally sick often. I once went a couple of years without one day off, but once I had a year where I had to have 18 days off!

If you had 18 consecutive days off because of a fairly serious problem I imagine most employers. including your new one, would be understanding.

If, on the other hand, you had 18 Mondays or Fridays off then I suspect most employers would be suspicious!

As somebody said earlier, it is normally the number of separate absences that causes the most concern.

TELLIT01

Planet_Switzerland wrote: »

I place I worked at had something called the Bradford Factor which was a score calculated from number of days and number of instances off sick. When you reached a certain score you no longer got sick pay, and it didn't take much to reach it.

The result was you had people turn up who were clearly too ill to be at work and were no use to anybody, but couldn't afford to lose a days pay. They were probably making other people in the office ill too.

That is certainly one by product of the rigid absence framework. Any decent manager should be able to differentiate between those who are only off when genuinely ill, and those who suffer from the Friday / Monday syndrome. The problem, as somebody else said, is proving that all staff are being treated fairly, when in reality all staff are being treated equally unfairly because of the skivers.
There is also the problem of gutless managers who seem to be scared of certain staff members. We had 2 staff members, sisters in fact, who would regularly phone in sick on a Monday after posting about on Facebook about how they had got totally wrecked at the weekend. That was never raised with them and unsurprisingly really got other people's backs up.