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

Oh no. I need those days for when I'm actually sick.

I have heard of people who did this. Guess who was let go first when the redundancy started.

Agreed I work in the public sector and I don't understand how people think it is ok to defraud the tax payer. And take from budgets that are already so stretched.

Abusing sick leave makes me really angry. Lots of people struggle in to work because they don't get sick pay other than SSP. So for others to treat sick leave as another form of annual leave is completely immoral. Especially if, like me, you're in the public sector and it's taxpayers money you're wasting.

I hope whoever is tasked with making NHS more efficient sees this.

Civil service, you used to have duvet days. I think it was within your annual leave entitlement but you had extra days over statutory. Five days a year you could just ring up and say you were having a duvet day no questions asked. I was fairly young so was great when you’d popped out for a few after work, overindulged and woke up with a stonking hangover.

Im sure other people had much more sensible reasons.

No. I don't get paid if I'm off sick.

Taking the chance to badmouth public servants eh? Or sort of bad mouth them with your ‘probably’.

Not a chance that no one would notice. All logged through IT systems, so hitting thresholds for attendance management is automatically triggered through the system.

My LA attendance policy is triggered by more than one occasion in 6 months, an occasion being half a day and/or more than 8 days in a row.. During an absence there is an expectation that contact is made first day, directly with line management and of KIT meetings weekly.

A back to work interview also takes place, before an attendance management plan is agreed with targets set to improve. If these targets are missed, the LA looks at capacity to do the job and ending contract.

Hardly no one notices!

This 👆👆

No. It drives me bonkers I work for the council and there are definitely piss takers. One bloke took six months off for years hanging around long enough to rebuild his sick leave entitlement. He then did his back in and had a period of genuine sick leave but it tipped over into disciplinary action. My boss was skipping around the office telling him not to be at work if he was in pain ( physical job) counting down the days before he could take action.

Crikey. We don’t get paid if off sick…people don’t appreciate how lucky they are to get paid. Only SSP which is about £100 a week!!

Absolutely not

No way! I have to be really unwell to stay off work and even then end up doing stuff from home even if that’s only checking emails and sending them to other people to deal with

Is sick leave entitlement even a thing?

Not in any place I have ever worked it isn't. Nor anyone I know.

Exactly this for me, and I know what you mean about not right but not 100% wrong either

I definitely don't see sick leave as extra holiday

Wow!!!

I have had sick leave for the last 24 years and have NEVER used it except for one week when I had the proper flu and literally couldn’t get out of bed for three days… I have always been fortunate to be able to work from home if I have been ill but I’ve never stopped working

if you are ill use it- if you’re not do not be that person… its wrong and it’s unprofessional

No! There us no such thing as a sick leave allowance!
I can't help thinking it is basically dishonest to "throw a sickie" .
But if you are ill, for heavens sake stay at home. I remember early Covid when people dragged themselves in, thinking they were being diligent, then sat there coughing all over the shop in the open plan office.

For those taking extra sick days when not sick (or looking after sick kids ) what do you do? Do you all stay home or brazen it out by going out and about and doing normal things ? I feel like I'd have to go to ground if off sick

No. I have needed it, when I had major surgery, and was off for 5 months. Other than that, I’m 1 or 2 days off a year, largely because I suffer from debilitating migraines.

Our sick leave stays on record so I didn't take any as I thankfully didn't need it for the first eight years in my current office. However I took a 'sick' week in January as I really needed the mental break without cutting into my annual leave. I regret nothing, as that was the year they stole Christmas holidays.

I’ve worked with a very few people who treated sick leave as just extra holiday - as in “well it’s not my fault I haven’t actually been ill, I’m still entitled to the days off”.

I’d never do it because a) it’s just wrong, and b) I’d never shift the feeling I’d be storing up some seriously bad Karma in life, pretending to be ill when I’m lucky enough not to be.

Yes. Our company holiday policy leaves me with just 15 “choosable” days off per year, the rest are bank holidays or company shutdown (which I’m forced to take off as holiday even though I wouldn’t even be working them all anyway)

We are allowed just 5 paid days off sick a year before questions get asked and pay gets docked.

Of course I bloody well use the full 5 days. When would I see my kids otherwise!?

It’s an unnecessarily punitive company policy that invites employees to mess with the system.

I worked with someone like this. Without fail, she would be ill a few days / week before every holiday and the same afterwards.
It amazed me that no one noticed (I did ask a colleague who was also a friend and she agreed that it happened, but what could we do?).
It meant that we had to pick up her work for double the amount of time.

No, I only take sick leave when needed.

I went to lead an inadequate school and one of the first jobs was to sort out staff illness. A definite pattern of one staff member ill, then the next…then the next. Almost as if they felt ‘he has been absent, now it is my turn’.

Evaluating the absences, it was easy to spot patterns and with the absence data and benchmarking against other schools, easy to show how expectations had slipped, through a failing headteacher.

Quickly resolved with a new vision and commitment to the children, combined with a focus on the strict attendance management policies. Those who didn't commit, left.