Sick leave rules where you live!

[themosquitoslayer]

Hi, I live abroad, Italy to be precise. I've lived here for a long time. Recently I interviewed a young English guy who has just moved over, he asked how may sick days he gets. I found this question bizarre, how can you know how any days you'll be ill for? If you're ill you say at home, end of story, we don't want you to make yourself worse or infect everyone else.

After a bit of research I found this is the normal thing to ask in UK now. It wasn't a thing when I last worked there over 30 years ago. I asked Italian colleagues if they knew if there was a limit, no one knew. A bit of Googling I discovered it is approx 180 days, depending on which government contract you have, that's not on full pay I should add...

On the other hand the English guy was shocked when I told him if he is ill, he must go to the doctor on day 1 of the illness and get a certificate (which is actually just a code that you send to HR) you cannot be off without one, or you have to use a day of your annual leave to cover it. It is illegal for HR or your boss to ask what illness you have and you are not obliged to say what's wrong when you phone in sick, however a temporary change was made to this during peak Covid. This is standard in all Italy as companies cannot set their own rules, we all have government contracts for the given work sector, that determine our working hours & pay level, similar to UK public sector but for all sectors.

It made me think, do any other countries operate like UK or Italy, they seem worlds apart!

UK it varies. My DD doesn't get sickness days or pay at all they just have to have it unpaid.
My DH got 10 days paid in a year if more you didn't get paid.
Retail part time you only get 3 separate sicknesses in a year if more you a have a disaplinery. The strange thing is that if you were only ill for 3 single days the 4th you would get a disaplinery. But if you had 2 months off continuously that would only be classed as 1 sickness.

Generally in the U.K. it’s not about the number of sick days per se, it’s the number that your company will pay you in full before you switch to statutory sick pay. Hint government jobs always are better for this. For my job it’s 3 months

I’ve not come across anyone personally in the UK who gets a set number of sick days per year. What you might get is a period of time that your employer will pay full pay for before statutory pay kicks in - that might range from no days to 6 months or more. It’s a benefit rather than a requirement to take that many days. But obviously, if people only get SSP and no days at full pay, it means they’re more likely to come into work when sick as they can’t afford to take time off.

I think the NHS would grind even more to a halt if we had to get a letter from the GP for every day of sickness!

I'm in Sweden. The expectation is that if you are sick you stay home. Nobody wants your germs. You can self certify for the first 7 days (I think) and then you need a dr's certificate. SSP is 80% of your salary, from day 2, but many employers top it up to 100%. The same applies if your kids are sick and you need to stay home to look after them, you get paid the same as if it were you.

There's no culture of soldiering on. If you're sick you stay home.

We sort of get a set amount because we get six months full pay and then six months half pay, but it's so ridiculously variable depending which sector you work in. Someone I know in engineering gets zero company sick pay.

https://www.gov.uk/taking-sick-leave

I'm in Germany. Up to two days is possible without a doctor's note. Six weeks full pay from your company then up to 78 weeks on around 60 to 70% salary paid by health insurance. Average sick leave is four weeks per year.

That’s interesting. It sounds like actually a really good system, but it wouldn’t work in the UK as we don’t have enough doctors for everyone to be going to the doctor every time they get a cold. I’m not sure what my own. Company’s policy is as thankfully I’ve never had a sick day. But I did have a room share with someone who worked for the council who come March time would take a week off ‘sick’ as she still have a weeks sick left!!! She genuinely considered it as her entitlement. Really bizarre mindset.

I know when my brother started work back in '76 he got an allocated number of sick days per year and these would be used as A/L, especially as the year wore on and you were running out of actual A/L.
When I started work a few years later this was not a thing in my place of work, sick was paid as & when required.

We have the same issue with not enough doctors here too now, with my Dr you have to tick the 'certificate required' bit on his app before 10am and then go to the surgery where he'll see you in between patients for a quick 2 minute chat and then give you the code. As the code is generate by the NHS system I think it automatically goes to HR anyway, but in the past it used to be a paper certificate. There's no soldering on if your'e sick and you are not respected for going in sick.

In the UK, I've always had full pay as sick pay from day 1. (Legally, employers didn't have to pay for the first 3 days.) Obviously more than 7 days, we have to have a doctor's note. Everywhere I've been (mostly big corporates) would do full pay for 6 months, then 6 months half pay, and I assume after that, they'd be looking at phased return or medical retirement.

The places I've worked have also used some variation of the Bradford formula, where 5 separate absences trigger HR involvement. So you can be better off having a single absence of 3 months then 6 shorter absences (and as a colleague, it's easier to manage knowing that Fred is off for the whole of next month, than trying to guess which days he will or won't be available.) My current employer does a passport to work for managing chronic/longterm illnesses, so we have colleagues with things like post-stroke, diabetes, colitis, various other things, because HR have been informed, it doesn't count towards sickness absences on their records. (though it still needs managing.)

German colleagues seemed to get signed off for a week with just a mild cold.

You are looking at the public sector. And even in the public sector it can take 5 years to build up maximum sick pay. Many private companies give you none, so it’s statutory sick pay.
Having to get a sick note on day one would cripple the NHS, that’s just ridiculous.
Your debt and GDP in Italy are not better than ours, so your system certainly isn’t better.

I've got a friend who lives in Australia and she get an allocated number of sick days every year that are paid, and if she doesn't need them to cover illness she can use them for holiday instead or bank them in case she needs them in future. When she told me at first I thought she was somehow cheating the system, but apparently it's common practice. There is an understanding that people tend to need a certain number of health days each year, and if they're not actively sick they're still useful for rest. I believe it can be problematic though if you have a longer term illness and you haven't banked sick days from previous years because options for paid leave area limited.

U.K. public sector

I had a disciplinary after being absent for week due to a complicated broken ankle that required two operations. I was unable to walk at all for three years and can still only walk a few steps.

that school was bloody ferocious though.

I've never heard of anyone having a predefined set number of sick days in the UK. As someone mentioned above, it's something I've encountered in Australia.

That is terrible. No one should be punished for being ill

This wasn't a standard question when I last interviewed and to me it would sound like 'how many days extra holiday do I get?'.

The Dr on day one thing wouldn't work in the UK at all. You'd have been back at work for three weeks before you got your apt! Not a good use of Dr's time at all!

After a bit of research I found this is the normal thing to ask in UK now

I'm doubtful of your research tbh. Asking for the sickness policy maybe, but even then I'm not sure it's usual to ask specifically at interview.

Tbh it sounds like AI research gleaned from the USA

Thanks for all the responses, Making me wonder why he asked. We didn't employ him.

yes I did use AI to ask it, an AI hallucination perhaps? Based on the replies I am glad we didn't employ him, it's now making me more suspicious as to what his intentions were.

A lot of places use the Bradford factor calculations and if your Bradford factor goes over a certain number you get put on capability and if you have any more sick days you can be fired.

i never got put on Bradford because I was disabled but it definitely happened to other people.

in those circumstances you come in even if you are dead otherwise you lose your job

Correct for Germany. A week for a cold is normal here!

What happens if someone is too sick to go to the doctors on day one? You'd not want people with gastro out in public surely, and someone with a severe migraine isn't going to be able to get to a doctors.

I’m in the U.K. and have long tenure at the company I work for so get 13 weeks full pay and 13 weeks half pay plus illness insurance through the company. It’s actually a US headquartered company though so my colleagues are on US contracts and they get virtually no sick pay and the expectation is that you work even if you’re about to collapse.

What retailer is that, it sounds vety strange.