How common is it to have pay deducted for sick days?

System

My employer pays SSP when off sick first 6 months. 6 months to 2 years, full sick pay, but first three days are unpaid. Two years, it's full pay. It's the number of years service plus 3 or 4 weeks. So if you worked for 12 years, you can get a max 16 weeks. After 18 years, you hit the max - half a year.

Can't remember if after that it's half pay.

I have income protection insurance as I'm only been with my employer for 9 years.

sangie595

itchyfeet123 wrote: »

This is consistent with research evidence -- companies that move from low numbers of sick days to being very generous, even up to having unlimited sick days, typically see *reductions* in absenteeism. There are three reasons for this:
1. People aren't incentivised to come in and spread their germs to their colleagues.
2. People don't see sick days as a resource to be used up.
3. Generous sick leave policies signal an organisation which values its employees, which motivates many employees not to seek to abuse benefits.

Quite. The incentives also have other benefits for employers - they retain high quality workers who don't feel inclined to shop around for better employers.

Paid sick leave is not inconsistent with good management. People who abuse the system are never as clever as they think and generally get caught. And since it would be a dismissable offence, there isn't a lot of interest in that. And generous paid sick leave usually goes hand in hand with managing sickness absence policies which include much better access to occupational health, additional services such as physiotherapy or counselling, and adjustments even for people who don't have disabilities. Managing sickness policies are not all about discouraging sickness absence - they have to be balanced with support to help employees be well.

The bottom line is that the worse the conditions an employer maintains, the more likely they are to struggle to recruit and retain staff. That is an enormous cost to an employer. Good business sense, whatever your business, is to attract the best people and keep them - they start off valuable, and their increasing experience makes them more valuable.

bugslet

BJV wrote: »

I own a company and we used to pay everyone full pay no matter how long they where off for. I say used to because after two years we had lost over 3 & 1/2 months sickness between the staff. Add in holidays and ?????. ( not talking anyone long term sick just a day here a day there??? ) normally it was just after pay day or the Friday before bank holidays)

Needless to say we now only pay SSP and for the past 2 years running days off sick and more than halved.

Yet BJVs experience suggests that having a generous sick pay policy saw more absence days.

I have SSP, never going to change it. My retention rate is very high and no, I'm not a bad employer. And of the 22 staff I have, only 2 have come from an advert, the rest have come looking for a job with us because they know current employees.

Purely anecdotally, two friends of mine work for the NHS and both domain about the - admittedly few - colleagues that abuse the sick pay system. If it wasn't there, it wouldn't be abused.

The novelty value of coming on this board to be told who rubbish I am is wearing thin.

ACG

Have a look at Income Protection/PHI.
You can have it to kick in from day one, although it would be quite expensive.

That being said, there are ways to keep the price down. Speak to a Mortgage Broker of IFA. Alternatively, you could do with putting money aside.

jimbo747

I don't deduct from our staff. Policy says we'll pay ssp, but I'd rather staff have time off to get better rather than coming in Ill and giving it me

One member was off Ill recovering from chemo/cancer for over a year with it returning in between, so not having to worry about money helped them I think.
Same with maternity leave, we topped up maternity leave for the (so far) only girl to get pregnant over the 6 months off to whatever their salary should be.

Staff are happy, so we get more done, makes it easy to recruit too.

bugslet

ACG wrote: »

Have a look at Income Protection/PHI.
You can have it to kick in from day one, although it would be quite expensive.

That being said, there are ways to keep the price down. Speak to a Mortgage Broker of IFA. Alternatively, you could do with putting money aside.

I only get SSP, so I have two income insurances, one that kicks in from day 1, and another That kicks in after a year. The first is a good deal actually, if I don't use it and get to 60 (when it was set up that was my retirement age), it acts as a savings plan, so I don't lose all the money.

Edit: Cirencester Friendly Society. Not sure if the same deal is available, mine was taken out about 20 years ago.

elsien

Parent used to pay sick pay. Then had a member of staff suggest that as they hadn't used it they were somehow losing out so they requested to take it as holiday instead and were upset when told no chance. Plus several others who started the Monday morning hangover sickness routine so at that point parent decided they were taking the proverbial and stopped paying it.

Muscle750

I get 30 days full pay and 30 days half pay and 30 days paid holiday a year not inc bank hols etc . However others i work with get nothing apart from 22 days hol only SSP which quite how they expect people to survive on is beyond me

Deep_In_Debt

My last company paid 10 days sick pay from the day you started and then SSP after that. The firm I am with now pay SSP for the first 1 year of employment then 1 month full pay from there until 3 years of service when it rises after that.

I have worked for companies in the past with generous sick pay schemes and saw a lot of absence.

Fortunately, I now have enough in savings to keep me going for a couple of months should I have a long term absence.

Undervalued

Muscle750 wrote: »

I get 30 days full pay and 30 days half pay and 30 days paid holiday a year not inc bank hols etc . However others i work with get nothing apart from 22 days hol only SSP which quite how they expect people to survive on is beyond me

Perhaps by taking some responsibility for themselves, although I know that is getting less and less fashionable these days!

Seriously, people need to budget and having a rainy day fund should be one of their highest priorities. If they only get SSP then they need to put some money aside to at least cover the difference for a month or more.