Staff taking more sick leave (and an opinion why)
Staff taking more sick leave (and an opinion why)
Employers are facing increasing costs for covering worker absences as employees take more time off due to illness.
A biennial workplace wellness survey by Southern Cross Health Society and BusinessNZ showed the average rate of absence was 5.5 days per employee over the course of 2022.
It compared to a range of 4.2 and 4.7 days between 2012 and 2020, and was the highest on record since the survey began in 2012.
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Southern Cross chief executive Nick Astwick said Covid and the then mandatory seven-day isolation was a factor in the higher absences.
"But we also believe as we've moved the minimum leave entitlement from five days to 10 days, that's also contributed to an increase of leave," Astwick said.
"Some of the workforce - we don't know how much - but some of the workforce see the 10 days as an entitlement and so we were expecting to see an increase, and we have," Astwick said.
Though another thing to consider is that, at least in my jobs, when the 5 days were exhausted, you just ate annual leave days when you were sick - or you just brought the bug into the office.
So the change could be reflecting that 5 days was actually not enough (especially with young children who bring home minor illnesses frequently). The increase in average rates seems quite small given the doubling of the allowance.
There will be abuse, I'm not denying it, but allowing us to use sick-leave instead of annual leave so that we can actually get recreational time off seems a fair enough change.
Though another thing to consider is that, at least in my jobs, when the 5 days were exhausted, you just ate annual leave days when you were sick - or you just brought the bug into the office.
I think it's this. We always just powered through it.
About a decade ago I developed a sudden severe illness when I was on contract work with a certain University.
After my 5 days were used up the University simply started docking 20% of my weekly pay for every day I was not able to come in.
(Looking back on it, it was deeply unethical of them because I was not full time staff and they were docking me 20% even for days when I had no mandated hours. I was in no fit state to argue.)
On the days when I actually had work hours, whenever it was even remotely possible I was dragging myself in to work and crawling around trying to do my job, because others depended on me. In that industry it's just what you do if work won't cover you.
I was fainting, collapsing, falling over, crawling on the floor, all sorts of stuff. Or no pay. But that was just our culture back then. Presenteeism.
Any step away from that is a step in the right direction.
Yeah, if you aren't tracking annual leave taken as sick leave then of course sick leave will go up when entitlement goes up. The reason it hasn't gone up a whole lot may be that there were already many employers offering more sick leave because 5 is clearly not enough. I've worked at places with 10 or 15 days sick leave, and I know at least one big bank has an unlimited sick leave policy.
"Some of the workforce - we don't know how much - but some of the workforce see the 10 days as an entitlement and so we were expecting to see an increase, and we have," Astwick said.
This is just total reckons with fuck all to back it up, he admits as such but still comes to his predetermined conclusion. What an utter ghoul
It is an entitlement.
These dumb fucks just don't like not having actual slaves.
He obviously wants sick people to come to work before they are well and to spread their sickness amongst other colleagues thus reducing overall productivity as more people have to take time off sick, or are performing below 100% while at work due to sickness.
This just strikes me that HR & management probably focus on days sick leave taken because its an easy thing to count rather than somehow trying to account for mid & long-term productivity across a period which is difficult to measure.
But also, the average between 2012-2020 was over a period where there was no global pandemic happening. People might want to pretend that in 2022 covid was over, but that's just wishful retrospective thinking, it still happening, and even if folks don't have to isolate now if you're too sick to work, you're too sick to work.
True, if something can easily be measured it will become a goal to minimise/maximize.
Regardless of its actual usefulness.
And it's easy to spin sick days as "the government forcing employers to allow employees to steal time from the employer".
The absurdity is calling it "lost" productivity. If I got to work sick and infect two others who become incapable of working. Thats doubled the cost and was a preventable productivity loss. If it was, say, COVID, and those two others died then what's the productivity loss?
Penny-wise pound-foolish thinking.
Any business that fails because they get 240 days/year rather than 250 days/year from employees deserves to fail.
I work for a company that has unlimited sick leave, it's fantastic and I have never once seen it be abused. People tend to take time off when they're crook and work from home when they're feeling better but are still potentially infectious.
It works well.