Once again the story of employers being hurt by employee sick days has raised its head, and once again I find myself asking who’s really to blame. When reported the issue of sick days tends to paint employees as the ones in the wrong, and to be fair there’s a large element of truth in that. But one question that’s never adequately asked is why people want to take sick days? Or more specifically, how much blame can be laid at the doorsteps of employers?
For example a good friend of mine works in a call centre on inbound calls, and the job is laced with rules upon rules. If you’re late by more than five minutes you have a meeting with HR who put a note on your file which after three such notes leads to a verbal warning. However if you’re on a call at the end of the day that runs past the end of your working day no note is made that my friend or his colleagues put that little bit extra in and should be rewarded. In the same call centre the junior managers range from the very nice to the very nasty. The very nasty, as you might expect, take every opportunity to abuse their positions of relative power. Oddly enough these factors and others serve to create an atmosphere that isn’t entirely conducive to employee happiness and as a result a lot of people take ’sick’ days.
Should they take sick days? No. But are they entirely to blame for taking sickies? No.
Perhaps before putting the blame entirely on the doorstep of employees it might be worth asking why employees want to take sickies?
Perhaps Alan Johnson should give that some thought.