That this work sickness policy is utterly crazy?

[SongforSal]

Been with the company over 2yrs and have always had a good sickness record. A few months ago I was very worried and in lots of pain as I had a period problem. My menstrual cycle lasted a good 3mths with only the odd day off. Other than a hospital appointment I had been waiting for an internal (I took a holiday day) there was one other day during this time, where I had to call in sick as I was in no position to work.

Last week, I called in sick for the day as I woke up in the night vomiting. Couldn't keep even water down. Didn't fancy the prospect of throwing up at my desk!

After a meeting with my boss, I was informed that having had 2 separate sick days, within a 6 month period, if I took another sick day within the next 6months-I would get a disciplinary!

Now, my contract allows 10 days per year paid sick leave. There are no stipulations, nor references to and reprimands, verbal or disciplinary procedures which may be enforced within this contract. Not that I have ever taken the piss.

Here comes the what the fuck rabbit hole have I just fallen down.

So. A colleague came into work today sweating, coughing, kept running to the bathroom, clearly very much unwell. On the back of a couple of weeks ago, when another colleague came in and spent 3 days at his desk with a cough, headache ect and chugging back lemsips. I asked my boss ''What happens if I catch this bug?'' and the reply I got was I could basically soldier on in as it is my choice to work, however if I got ill, and stayed home. You guessed it-a disciplinary.

So I am thinking I may need to invest in a hazmat suit for work, and fill the pockets with bloody dettol spray, as people are having to come in ill-or face reprimands! I can see why they feel forced to do so, but the knock on effect (selfishly) is I will get ill from being at work, and effectively punished if I take time off as to recover and not infect everyone else.

Does my place of work sound like a 18th century factory to you? Is this common?

now all that happens is that his collegaues take the max time off without breaching the rules

Yep. Exactly what happened where i used to work. They bought in the Bradford system. Relationships between management and staff were antagonistic and it was made clear that it was going to be used as a stick to beat us with.

Stupid management fuckers underestimated how easy it was to play the system and by being so antagonistic and the way it was set up, made people take longer off than they otherwise would have done.

In the end it was almost regarded as a bonus holiday.

That's how DH colleagues see it - a lot of them - as like holiday entitlement and they take the max

DameFanny and when your competent manager turns out to be not so competent? So you have to manage them out before you can address the appalling abuse of ‘sick leave’?

Might work with a small company. There’s 300000 staff at the company I work at. It has to be standardised at some point. Otherwise you end up with a situation where one TL is more lax with their staff than another, so someone raises a grievance that they’re being picked on, Peggy’s team never get penalised for X amounts of sickness. And then everything has to come down to opinion - especially when you self-certify for a week.

I’ve worked at 2 places in the last 7 years since I went back to work after having DCs and both use the Bradford scoring system which is what you describe. I’d never heard of it before then. Same happens at my work with people coming in with stomach bugs. Being at work with a cold is one thing but not a stomach bug - that’s just vile! You can see why they feel pressured to come in though. No one can help being genuinely poorly

DianaofThemiscira but what if team leads didn't penalise sickness - which is dumb anyway, because that's what gets people coming in with noro - but instead managed productivity of the individual staff member?

If the emphasis is on output, and performance, it's up to the individual to manage their own constraints. If that individual has a chronic illness or other disability, they can work with occ health to set the parameters for working, and then be performance managed within those parameters.

And if someone's not meeting targets because they're pulling sickies every Friday, a conversation could be had about the not meeting targets, and maybe that individual could be put on a performance plan.

And maybe if that person is meeting all their targets despite being off more than the scale says it's good, then you recognise that high performers can be prone to, say, migraine, and you check they've got access to support, but you don't do anything as fuckwitted as firing them for doing the work in less time than their peers...

Standard procedure in most of the jobs I've had.

I used to work for the nhs and it was 3 absences a year equal a disciplinary. I was front line staff working with newborns and me and my colleagues would be at work with terrible colds and even d&v.

I spent one shift running to the loo with the shits thinking I was going to crap my pants. Someone told the matron who came to ask if it was true that I was that ill and I said yes but that I wasn't prepared to risk a disciplinary and she just shrugged and said fair enough.

It's putting patients at risk but staff feel they can't risk their jobs. One of my colleagues who had a serious chronic condition got sacked. No compassion.

Alll those who are allowed up to 10 days in a year - that's generous compared to ours (Scottish council) - 3 instances or 6 days - whichever you hit first in a year. Seems to be standard across all Scottish councils.

I've had 9 weeks off since Septemeber in 3 blocks of 3 weeks off with pneumonia and a collapsed lung. I went back to work too soon after the initial illness which wasn't fully cleared and made myself more ill by trying to go and do my job. We get 3 months full sick pay then 3 months half pay. Whilst i've not had any warnings or disciplinary actions ( I am covered by The Equality Act) but Management have taken a different approach (bullying, micromanaging, inconsistent application of policies etc)... My health is more important than any job and if I am genuinely too ill to work I will be in my sick bed watching Jeremy Kyle..

I will be in my sick bed watching Jeremy Kyle...

I can't ever imagine being that sick!

@DameFanny

What you’re suggesting is literally a blanket policy that is flexed or personal circumstances. Which is what this is. If you have a shit manager that won’t follow the rules but also override where they recognise previous years service and patterns which are unlikely to be repeated, then they’re shit managers.

Some of the policies noted on this thread seem ridiculously harsh, particularly the NHS ones, only OP can say whether she’s genuinely worried about a disciplinary or whether she thinks it’ll just be a tick in the box for the process. Which it would be for where I work.

@Ollivander84 I had an almost identical situation. I'm immunocompromised from having a transplant and taking anti rejection medication. I had one "Employee Relations" advisor tell me that disability wasn't an excuse and my transplant couldn't be the reason for all my short term absences with chest infections, d&v etc. When I tried to explain that the medication I took to manage my condition caused lowered immunity as a side effect, she asked when my course of medication would end!

Thankfully she got reassigned in a department shuffle and no longer works in a people facing role.

I've just been off for 8 weeks with the winter virus. It became pneumonia and then my asthma went out of control. I still can't breathe properly. I decided I wasn't coming back until I was completely better. Initially I thought I was chancing my arm a bit, knowing if I stayed off for 21 days it would be better for me than having a shorter term absence, but I'm glad I did, otherwise I would have returned too soon, then gone off sick again and made it worse for myself. I kept getting worse over a 6 week period, then finally turned a corner and started to improve. I probably still went back a bit too soon and should have asked for a phased return, but I'm glad to be back without the stress of meetings with HR. As it was, my manager and I laughed our way through the return to work interview because it tries to cover everything from illness caused by infection to stress to industrial industry. Half of it wasn't appropriate so we started being sarcastic. When I got the "How will you prevent this happening again?" question I ended up saying "By breathing properly. Maybe I need to be retrained how to do that?" (We work in employee training). By that point we were so far gone it was hilare. Best sickness meeting I've had in many years.

ShesAnEasyLlama
I have a member of staff with Lupus and she is almost never off sick but one year she was unfortunate to have a string of chest infections and HR made me give her a sickness warning against my protests. It caused her so much stress and I felt like such a dick because she is an excellent member and does more in the part time hours she is in than most of my full time staff.
I let her know as far as I was concerned we were ticking boxes but she’s conscientuous and it still made her worried.

Interesting @gamerwidow, my manager says the same thing about it just being box ticking. My short term sicknesses are fine - my Bradford score for them is only 8. But when I get ill, I get really ill and completely crash. He's quite protective of me professionally, and for a very mild mannered man I've heard from others who have witnessed him get angry if he feels someone is asking too much of me or being a workplace cf towards me. He's never had cause to pull me up on my standard of work in the 6 years I've been there, so I guess he feels in a similar position to you.