| Journal: TWUK | Section: |
| Title: | Issue Date: 10/07/00 |
| Author: | Page Number: 62 |
| Copyright: Other |
Is it now too tricky to pull a sickie?
Employees who dishonestly take days off sick are costing the travel industry millions of pounds every year. But beware, your fake illness could easily be found out. Helen Conway reports
IT’S YOUR nightmare scenario.You’ve run out of holiday leave but fancy taking a day off to go to Wimbledon.Giving a performance worthy of a BAFTA award, you phone the agency where you work to tell them about your migraine attack and your plan to stay at home in a darkened room.
But later that evening, watching the highlights on television, you spot yourself in the crowd and you know that your tennis fan manager is bound to be watching. It may be little consolation as you face your boss the next day but rest assured you were not the only one at the match who had taken a sickie.
According to a recent Institute of Personnel and Development survey, just over a third of all sickness absence, amounting to more than three days per employee per year, has nothing to do with genuine ill health and everything to do with the employee wanting the day off for personal reasons.
Clearly not everyone who takes sick leave is faking it and companies do allow for the genuinely ill by allocating a set number of sick days when employees are allowed full pay.
In the regional travel agency chain Bakers Dolphin, for example, staff are allowed up to 20 days sick leave on full pay. Any time off taken after that and the employee will get half-pay and finally statutory sick pay. But do those 20 days on full pay tempt staff to beef up their annual holiday allocation?
Bakers Dolphin Travel personnel manager Kathryn Hinde believes that most employees will act honestly with regards to sick leave but just in case, she offers guidelines to the managers of the 80-branch chain on how they can control sick leave.
Firstly, the patient must call in sick by 10am and tell the manager they are not coming to work.
If the manager is unavailable, he or she must leave a contact telephone number so the manager can call.
“If you have to actually speak to the manager, it does make it more difficult to lie,” says Hinde.
That in itself is a deterrent but worse still, on returning to work, the employee must sit down and fill in a sick leave form in the presence of the manager.
This also gives the manager the opportunity to review the employee’s record on sick leave.
According to Hinde, having a set procedure on sick leave acts as a psychological deterrent.
“Contrast that approach with a company where you can just leave a message saying you are ill and then when you come back everyone says ‘nice to see you’ and does not question you illness.
“The majority of people do not take the mickey but for those who have a tendency to do so, having a procedure to measure absenteeism makes things more difficult for them.”
factfile
The Institute of Personnel and Development surveyed 1,684 organisations totalling almost 2m people. The survey found:
n The average level of sickness absence is 9.3 working days lost at a cost of £500 per employee per year.
n Some 90% of employers see sickness absence as asignificant or very significant cost to their business.
n Colds and headaches are the most common reasons given for time off work due to sickness.
n Some 91% of larger companies with 2,000 or moreemployees have a written policy on absence.
n Eight out of 10 of the survey respondents said return-to-work interviews were particularly useful in managing absence levels.
Phoning in: it is more difficult to lie to your manager