To ask if anyone deliberately plans/uses their sick leave as part of their entitlement?

Senior management sleeping on the job. In much despised local authority they'd be out on their ear ( having followed HR process of course)

Hope your recovery journey goes well

Nope, a large technology company.

Anecdotally, over the years I have known of quite a few nurses who have had long periods of sick leave multiple times, but then of course as you say there are people like that everywhere including my own workplace.

So I did some digging to get more of a broader view on this beyond my own limited knowledge -and from what I can see NHS staff sickness rates (not necessarily just nurses of course) have now reached their highest since 2010.

Which is kind of linked to what I was hinting at earlier about how 2010 signalled the start of a sharp decline in living and working standards with people being expected to do more for less basically and how that can impact sickness rate.

https://amp.theguardian.com/society/2023/jun/29/nhs-staff-sickness-rate-england-record-high

And it’s 3.6% higher than the average public sector sickness rate.

If I've got a cold and feeling a bit crap I WFH rather than go into the office (like today. Sneezing everywhere!) that means I can use sick leave for when I'm really unable to work. I generally in that case very rarely have time off sick. I think the last time was a couple of days in August 2023 when I was completely burnt out and MIL had just died so I was trying to prop up DH too. I'm lucky that I have a very generous holiday allowance though as I choose to 'buy' extra annual leave each year.

I never have. I rarely take sick days. But like someone up thread working from home you were encouraged to still work even if you felt terrible. And I've done that. I'm determined not to do so again.

I know people who've had double their leave entitlement and nothing is ever done about it.

Wow…Interesting. I wonder if a lot of people do that in nursing ?

@Apotofgold

I've been a nurse for over 30 years and can count on one hand the number of sick days I've had

Not one since prior to Covid

There are piss takers everywhere, they should be picked up through the absence policy and referred to OH

As far as I’m aware I think it’s more common in the states, where employees get little annual leave, and only a small number of paid sick days. Very unreasonable to do this in the UK and you would soon face a disciplinary I think.

Thinking aloud here but I feel this use of long term sick - basically ensuring you only work half the year- wouldn’t wash in the US.

Part of that is down to their work “ethic” /“addiction” ( whatever you want to call it!) but I’m also wondering if it’s partly because they get paid so much more.

As much as people shouldn’t take the piss I wonder if some of it is due to people working so much for so little pay?

I used to work in a U.S. company and an entry level role in London was £20K per year salary and the same role in NYC was something like $50K which is around £37,000. It also had health insurance as part of it too.

According to this thread it’s happening a lot in the NHS with nurses and others. Nurses get paid way more in the States.

It would be interesting to see if sickness has risen since around 2010 which is I think when wages started to stagnate.

I do think we have a real problem with our cost of living vs wages that needs to be tackled.

Back in the olden days about 20 yrs ago the company I worked for used Bradford Factor to manage sickness and we all extended our sick leave to several days even if we only needed 1 because counter intuitively it makes the calculation better to have longer periods of absence than shorter ones.

Wow…Interesting. I wonder if a lot of people do that in nursing ?

Also wondering if you think better pay would discourage people from doing this?

Save the NHS eh.. people like you have destroyed it. I have a good friend who works in HR for an NhS hospital and this is a very common issue. No wonder there's no frigging money!! Shame on you.

No, i only use it when really unwell.
Last time was at the end of 2023 when i had a nasty dose of covid, and that was my first sick leave since 2018.

I have a colleague who must have about a month off "sick" over the course of a year and it annoys me as its always in the lead up to or tagged to the end of her A/L.

I only really use it if I literally can't work. Another time I had a horrible cold for about three weeks that I couldn't shift at all and just felt shattered and unable to get over it, so I took a couple of days then as I just needed to get better and not have it drag out. I was honest about it too.

I have dependents so have to take time off for illness and appointments with them, so I tend to just get on with it, as I wouldn't want to get struck with really bad flu like I've had before and then be in trouble for taking too much leave. I hate other people covering for me too.

I don’t think so. I’m undergoing chemo. I couldn’t do a full day in the office due to tiredness or the infection risk. Wfh lets me work as much as I can and then log off. So they get half a days work out of me most days rather than 5 months on sick leave. Win win.

Illness isn't a binary.

You can be feeling grotty but your brain is working perfectly fine.

I once had a knee operation. Back in the day it meant I couldn't work because I couldn't get to work or move around the office. Now I would not have needed to miss much work at all

You can be well enough to work from home but not well enough to deal with going to a workplace. I had a serious injury a couple of years ago - if I had to go to a workplace I would have to have been signed off. As it was I wfh so could easily carry on working uninterrupted. A win both for me and my employer.

I'm not quite sure why you would think this is "Not good advocacy for those 'WFH'"

You get three volunteering days a year in CS, I'm not sure why you think people shouldn't use them. Admittedly, they should be doing more than two hours but it's possible they break it up. I'm a charity trustee and I use mine in odd hours for meetings, I don't take the rest of that day off. But if I needed or wanted to volunteer for a whole day, that would be fine too.

But if you are sick, surely you aren't fit enough to work?
Not good advocacy for those 'WFH'

Totally this. Oh the joys of working (shirking)from home😆

Do you work for the civil service by any chance? I'm only enquiring as someone who attends my voluntary gardening group admits to volunteering ( 2 hours) to get a day off work and they work for the cs.!
Wow

I usually take 1 or 2 days a year for things like headcolds/flu/stomach bugs etc.

A friend of mine struggles with endometriosis and has awful pain around her periods so she takes those days as sick leave and can plan in advance. I think it’s totally acceptable for anyone with a chronic condition to plan their sick leave, but for anyone well they’re just tempting fate!

I wouldn’t feel comfortable lying - surely it’s gross misconduct if you were caught out?

We have 4 instances and/ or 10 days in a rolling 12 month period. It then goes to disciplinary.
I often think 'what the hell take some', then..so what if I do get ill afterwards, I would be utterly screwed.

We have 26 weeks of paid sick leave per year, however the first 5 days of an absence are unpaid and after that you need a medical certificate. We always have the option of taking unpaid leave anyway, so anyone wanting to extend their holiday days would just take that option rather than using sick leave and potentially getting into trouble.

I have several staff who do it- drives me mad and pisses off their colleagues. They don't care but equally will never be promoted.