Having to ring absence line by 8am

[ProbablyLate]

DH and I are both teachers and have this policy and I wonder if it's the same in other jobs.

If I need a day off for illness I have to ring school between 7:30 and 8am. I appreciate that schools need to know as early as possible if staff aren't going to be in, and this works fine in the situation that you wake up ill in the morning. DH came home ill yesterday and last night let his head of department know he wouldn't be in today and cobbled together some cover work but he still has to be up to ring the absence line.

AIBU to think that if its obvious the previous day that you're going to be off ill the next day there should be another way of letting them know as often having a good sleep can make you feel much better?

I've had messages at 2am from members of my team who think it's best to let me know they will be off, so they can sleep through. Not much chance of me organising cover at that time.

It's because of this type of behaviour everyone has the same requirement, call in (not text) at 8am if you don't have a sick note.

The call will be to admin staff who will be arranging cover.

If you are not capable of making the call at the right time, then a representative can. This could be a co-habitant, or the HoD he spoke to yesterday.

What doesn't seem right is to bugger up the admin staff.

Schools are highly inflexible places, with lots of rules that are inconvenient/onerous from the POV of the person affected by the rule (pupil, parent, staff). But as schools have pared the admin to the minimum, I think it is important that everyone does what they can to stick to the systems that make the (overloaded) admin jobs just about do-able

That's really weird for ongoing illnesses. I don't think it's remotely normal even just polite to notify your work daily.

I'm off sick recovering from surgery but now have quite a bad cold. If I wasn't off I would have emailed or called our director (I don't really have a line manager) to say I was ill and then estimate how long I'd be off. So I probably would have emailed Tuesday morning and would tell them I'd let them I'd let them know how I'm doing later today for Friday.

Or if I really wasn't sure how my illness would progress I might update daily. But tbh I knew how ill I was on Tuesday I'm not going to be fine for the next day or the day after.

I agree on the sleep thing. Especially as it can be quite disrupted when you are poorly so I normally get off properly in the early hours and then sleep late. Over the time you'd need to call in!

@Couldhavebeenme3

Ours is 7.15am, for every day you're off without a sick note, even when the GP has told you you'll probably need 6 weeks off.

If you’re off for 6 weeks you’d have a sick note though, it’s only a week you can self certify

As a parent it’s irritating to have to ring every day too, when you know that the child is going to be off for several days.

@LawnFever

If you’ve already told them the day before it’s stupid to need to tell them again in the morning, they’re being ridiculous.

I thought I misunderstood the post with some of the responses. I agree with this.

And yes to PP interrupted sleep to make an unnecessary phone can set you back and is not always easy to fall back to sleep.

In my school you need to call before 8am. But you can call the night before if you know you are going to be off, and certainly don't need to call every day if you are going to be off for a while.

From an employers point of view (not a school)- we make employees phone in daily (unless they have a sick note) as otherwise we get people taking more time off. So if they have to "phone in sick" daily we get less sickness absence.

My view is that people don't like lying in person, they are perfectly happy to text in sick or email (or just stay off!), phoning makes them more likely to come in and less likely to have duvet days.

The annoying thing is that I can trust 75% of my staff to do the right thing, its the others that mean the rules have to be applied across the board, so there are many members of staff who I literally have to send home if they are sick, then there are the ones who stay at home for anything.

It’s really annoying but pretty common. I suppose there’s a chance you could feel ok the next day. The real reason is to dissuade people from calling in sick.

@girlmom21

Isn't it just courteous to notify your manager each day in a timely manner anyway?

So even if you've been signed off by your GP for, let's say, 4 weeks, you think it's courteous to call your manager every day?

Or, you've called in on day one of the absence, reported that you won't be in all week as you have flu (proper flu, not a sniffle), you'd call every day out of courtesy?

OP, I think it's daft draconian that your DH called yesterday to say he wouldn't be in and is required to call again on the day.

@tickingthebox73

This is so true. People hate phoning but are usually happy to send a text or email so it does put some people off.

I was a teacher and had to ring as early as possible. When we had to ring the HT it had to be before she left home, so before 7.30. Later, it was before 8 and to leave a message for the office staff. They need time to arrange cover, you would be expected to let them know before the end of the school day if you were coming in the next day so they could speak to the supply teacher (if there was one).

Yes, this is ridiculous. Especially if you’ve been up half the night vomiting or whatever. There should be an email address.

Doesn't the absence line have voicemail?

Having said that, where I work, I need to phone in to report sick to an automated system and I can't do it before 7am because of the way it calculates our working days. But I just go back to bed once I've done it.

Not all reasons for being off sick prevent someone from using a telephone or require being asleep in bed to aid recovery,

Seems perfectly reasonable for teaching, where they need to arrange cover, although I suppose there could be flexibility if you know it is unlikely or impossible to be in work the next day, eg he's a games teacher who's broken his ankle or went home because of vomiting.

Seems utterly pointless if he has already notified them the day before or for an ongoing illness where you are known to be absent.

For a first day of absence its not unreasonable.

Everywhere I've worked I've had to call in daily before 10am. You can't always know if you'll still be sick the next day. You might wake up feeling much better.

I really do think the night before should be sufficient. Often the thing that’s going to make you better will be sleeping in - and not everyone is good at getting back to sleep.

My works the same, and I find it frustrating that if I’ve had a really rough night and finally managed to get to sleep, I have to wake up to phone and tell them what they already know

From an employers point of view (not a school)- we make employees phone in daily (unless they have a sick note) as otherwise we get people taking more time off.

Does that apply to all illnesses? Over the last 10 years I've had two periods of illness. Once I had a sick note from the doctor issued straight away so presumably wouldn't have had to call in, but the other I was hospitalised and awaiting surgery to clear my throat so I could breathe properly - it would have been really stupid for the school to insist I (or a worried family member) call every day.

If you’ve already notified them the night before then I don’t see why you have to notify them again in the morning

In my work (not a school) we have to phone a premium rate number every day of our absence and follow a 6-7 minute automated process and then we have to call to terminate our sickness using the same line at least 1 hour before the start of our return shift (or else we will be sent home and possibly face a disciplinary for “abusing the sickness scheme”). And given that we only get SSP it often feels like they profit off any sickness we have. There should be more humane ways of dealing with sickness and absence.

I think if he’s already confirmed he will defintely still be ill the next day and not attending then his supervisor should accept that. Is that what he actually did?

I once let my manager know the night before that I had noro. Proceeded to spend most of the night on the bathroom floor surrounded by puddles of stuff. Got so many phone calls in the morning from manager, pestering me. Luckily I was dead to the world and phone was on silent. I only woke up to start vomiting again.
He said I should have set an alarm to phone in the morning and seemed to think that because my colleague came on to work with noro the year before that I should do the same. We worked in a furniture be sales room, and it was January sales. Can you imagine anything worse?
Bloody stupidity.

In the school where I worked most recently, you had to ring the HT's mobile by 7.30am and then if you were going to be off the following day, you had to ring him by 2pm to let him know. Not the school office, but him personally.