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

There was one person in my last workplace who took six months sick leave three years in a row. She even had the brass neck to phone payroll each time to ask when her SSP entitlement ran out so she could plan her return! Why they didn’t get rid of her I shall never know.

Not for general holiday, but I've used it when my child has been sick. Officially, I'm meant to take unpaid leave to look after dd when she's unwell. My manager is very supportive and let's people use annual leave if they wish. There was one time when dd was unwell for 3 days, but I didn't have any annual leave left, as it was 2 weeks before the end of the holiday year. I lied, and said that I was ill, because I couldn't afford to take unpaid leave (single parent).

We had a department administrator who took their sick leave as part of their annual leave entitlement. They carefully worked out being back at work for the required 12mo to then take off their entire full pay sick leave as 'stress'. Stress is very real but interesting how he was only affected on a 12mo cycle and only for his complete full pay sick leave weeks.

Annoyingly he would then come in when he was genuinely ill (because he didn't want to use up his sick leave then) thus making the rest of us ill.

HR would do fuck all but everyone resented him. It made a mockery of those genuinely ill, especially those with more invisible illnesses like stress.

No, never. I've never taken a sick day in my life. If I did it'd be because I was sick 🤷‍♀️

I feel v lucky to have my job, so I'm not gonna take the piss. Plus I'm not as charming or peopley as some, but what I can be is efficient and reliable, so that's what I am.

Does your sick pay reset every year?

in Australia we get 10 days per year and they accumulate every year if you don’t use them. I have been at my work for 5 years and I have about 18 days accrued.

In my most stretched years ( 2 primary years, working full time and doing a work related masters cos I was fecking insane) I used sick leave sometimes to cover dc illness. I would have a day off unpaid with them, then would catch it to cover any other days. Frankly with only 22 days a year holiday it was the best I could do.
I also took the odd sick day to cover writing college assignments. If I ever felt guilty I would remind self that the blokes were doing the same but playing golf.

Nope, only ever when I needed it. The only thing I’ve ever done is report mental health as a stomach bug as I had a bullying line manager who would tell everyone what we were off with.

They shouldn’t be using sick leave like this. I work somewhere where I only get SSP - no paid sick leave and my wage is pretty good so I’m too worried to be off. Even when I was really rough with Covid I worked from home every day - I didn’t dare not log on or do the actual work. Mind you I’ve not used much of my annual leave this year either so am likely to use it. Maybe I’m a rarity - I love my job and the people I work with, so it’s never a chore going in to work.

How does someone who is never there get promoted? Baffling management.

This is absolute rubbish. Sickness is very closely, even aggressively, monitored in the NHS. To the extent it can exacerbate any long term or relapsing/remitting conditions in some workplaces. It's absolutely crackers, tbh, and contributed to my early departure from a profession I loved.

I used to work at a county council. Policy was first 2 days sick unpaid so basically you either got people like me who never took sick even if probably should to avoid the loss of pay or the other half who used to just take the whole week off instead. It was supposed to be to stop people taking a Friday or Monday as sick.

Also NHS. 6 month entitlement but I don’t think I’ve had a sick day since 2017. And could count on one hand the number of sick days I’ve had ever. But my child has a potentially life limiting condition and I know will go downhill and need a big operation in the next year or two and I am absolutely “planning” to use my sick leave when that happens. I won’t in a good position to work safely.

I have a job where if you take sick leave, the work doesn’t really go away. Nobody else covers it. It just still needs doing when you come back, which is often really unhelpful - if you have been off sick the last thing you need is an absolute mountain of work to come back to.

But because of this, weirdly, it means I don’t feel bad about taking a day off sick here or there when really I probably could push through if I really needed to. It’s basically an excuse to cancel your meetings for the day and make your own agenda. In this situation it actually often just means working from home, doing some emails, maybe catching up on a bigger piece of work that I haven’t managed to get around to. And having a bit of a rest in between. It basically just means being able to get out of the endless bloody meetings that seem to fill my entire diary and leave me with no time to do the actual work that arises out of them.

However I would only ever do the above when I actually had some sort of ailment like a bit of a rotten cold. I would never completely make up being unwell just to take a days sick leave. Mainly because I’d be too worried about getting found out.

No, but I’ve slightly peeved to find myself managing a team in another country where this ‘use it or lose it’ approach to sick leave seems to be the norm. They basically ensure they take their 2 days sick leave a month, usually tagged on to a weekend or holiday.

i only use it when I’m sick, but I’m sure the more unscrupulous do abuse sick day leave.

I’ve just been bullied out of a job I loved. I have filed a constructive unfair dismissal case against them. It’s actually made me physically ill recently, but has made my mental health plummet for years.
I never took any sick leave. I should have done. I wish I’d maxed it out and done as little as possible for them.
People should prioritise themselves, above any employer or ‘ethics’ or advice from strangers.
When it comes to it, they’ll watch you burn and look the other way.

No has never crossed my mind that anyone would do this. I'm shocked reading this thread.

Is this a poll for the Daily Mail about how the underlings as misusing sick leave?

My goodness, maybe Rachel Reeves should investigate the misuse of sick days within the civil service instead of cruelly ripping some kids out of their schools due to the hastily applied VAT charge!!

This thread has been eye opening to say the least. I think I've taken less than 10 days off ill in my whole working life (I'm in my late 50s)!!

I have had one day off in the past ten years for norovirus I think
I had two weeks off the year before for an op
so absolutely not - but I know a lot of people do

Find it hard to imagine anybody actually doing this.

I would be far too anxious that I'd use it and then really get sick. That and it's completely dishonest and just not something I would do.

I only take sick days if I’m sick.

Not really.. but.. sometimes if it's been a long month, and I'm just at the end of my tether, I'll mark myself as sick for an easy day. If there was an emergency I'd pitch in, and I'll likely do some work in the quiet since I'll mark myself away on Slack.

I'm senior, so I work extra hours as required anyway (even on call when actually on holiday) - and my team are from a country were people seem to call in sick quite often (I was surprised the first time I saw dysmenorrhea as a reason to be off one day), so I don't feel bad or that I'm diddling the company out of anything.

I haven't ever done this as you say, but I was desperately miserable and stressed/depressed in a job once, it was due to the job and things like being completely excluded from a project I should have played a central part in, the job being very different to the job description/how it was portrayed at interview etc and I'd also had some bad personal news so I went off with stress and didn't come back until I'd exhausted all my sick leave which was four weeks. It was part warranted and partly a bit of a 'fuck you' to my boss. If my boss hadn't been such a monumental dick I'd have come back after 1 or 2 weeks. I then tried desperately to get another job and left 3 months later, as i knew I wouldn't be staying there long term I wasn't too worried about exhausting that year's sick leave.

No I would never do that. . I work in teaching, we have very generous paid leave but would be leaving our classes and colleagues completely in the shit if we did that. The only time I've been signed off was for a non weight bearing fracture and I felt like a total fraud despite not being able to even carry a cup of tea across the room. I astonished people do this.