Is this an acceptable amount of sick leave?

[MaddenA]

One day in Feb 2023 with a cold and accompanying fever.
10 days in November 2023 with bronchitis which I was hospitalised for.
1 day (so far) in March 2024 with covid.

I think I've been so pressured in previous jobs to be in work when I'm unwell that I have no idea anymore what an acceptable level of sickness is...

It's fine
My work will do an informal meeting after 3 sicknesses in a rolling 12 months
Mine is higher so I don't trigger until 6 occasions in 12 months

Oh don’t be ridiculous. If I don’t turn up to work, people are directly affected. I don’t actually work in an office. Staying home for every single sniffle would be way ott…especially when I’ve probably caught it from my clients in the first place.

I hope you are able to get some help for your health anxiety. A cold is not a serious illness.

Depends possibly on the busyness of the work place.

I know when me and my colleague went on a road trip to hospital last week, she knocked some sense into me saying our workplace is hardly busy and health must come first. What were our employer going to do, sack me the week before I leave so I relented and took next day off and felt better for it.

I think if it had been extremely busy, I may have thought differently but if you need to be off, you need to be off.

It would trigger a response where I work - not in a bad way, my manager would check in with me, see if there was any issues they need to address etc. Welfare not punishment

3 absences in 12/18 months is a pretty normal 'trigger point' for a first stage chat but I'd expect nothing to come of it, particularly since one of the absences was a hospitalisation.

It's more about patterns and people calling in for no real reason because they just fancy a day off, than anything else. There's usually other issues as well.

For example, I had a staff member who I could guarantee would call in on either a Saturday or Sunday dayshift if there was a bank holiday in that month.

We paid the bank holiday at double time, so 'dropping' a shift cause he was hungover didn't affect his earnings (in his head).

That eventually became a disciplinary issue because they were all one-day non-descript sick, no medical evidence type things and the pattern was glaring.

Too, the type calling out cause they can't be bothered generally can't be bothered when they're there, either. Whereas, the genuine 'run of bad luck' or 'something underlying going on' groups generally will have solid records and performance.

You can calculate your Bradford score. You have 2 instances in the last 12 months with 11 days so a Bradford score of 44. This is normally just below the threshold where HR start to twitch.

Brad Score = (Instances x Instances) x Days off

So lots of instances of less days gives you a higher score than less instances with more days.

Brad Score for 3 instances with 2 days off each is 54 so higher than yours but with fewer days off.

My score is 82 and my work haven't said anything - they understand that things happen

It was colds, not 'sick' - you can't be off every time you have a cold FFS if you're well enough to be working!

Surely it depends on what your employer says.

It may be for legitimate reasons but my current employer wouldn't be happy with three occurrences in 12 months. Previous employer wouldn't accept more than 1 occurrence in 12 months.

@TallulahBetty and that attitude is how I ended up sick for the last six weeks and having to WFH

Well I'm sorry but I'm not going to call in sick every time I have a cold.

12 days in 13 months is on the face of it quite a lot of days. But give one is 10 days and involved being hospitalised then I wouldn’t be concerned about a little now.

If you were a school pupil your parent would have had to sign an attendance contract agreeing to encourage you to go to school every day. I think that's stupid personally and don't think you are being unreasonable. If you're ill, you're ill. I got annoyed when I was told to encourage my child to improve his attendance while he had emergency abdominal surgery then had sepsis. Told them I'd encourage him over his hospital bed.

I mean to be fair it is 11 days off in 5 months

We get a disciplinary after 4 periods of absence in a rolling 12 month period. 3 would get you a little chat with a manager.
Once I had two osteoarthritis related periods, d and v, and a virus.
That got me a 6 month verbal warning.
We are expected, if well enough, to come in with covid.

Most people wouldn’t bat an eyelid at that amount of sickness.

Well.its not really i have known people dismissed for having too much time off sick a few days here a few days there and this was in the NHS ,work places have sickness policies ,
No it's not the Op ,s fault for being sick
But company's can and do dismiss people for having a lot of time off.

Well your lucky to be able to work from home
People get colds all.the time they can't just stay at home because of you and these are people who can't work from home

Why would any of the latter part of your sentence even need to be said if it was "justified" should people drag themselves in from hospital or go into work to spread Covid for the sake of presenteeism and make the whole office ill.

I hate it when one of my coworkers comes in hacking their guts up at their desk like some bloody martyr and I end up inevitably getting their virus! (Makes me even more mad that we have the ability to WFH)

If you're ill you're ill stay home and don't spread your lurgy, I really thought Covid would have changed the culture about coming into work sick...

No sane employer would even blink at that. Yes the 10 days was a lot but you were hospitalised! The rest of it is just a normal amount of sickness

Btw I'm more irritated by companies having this sort of culture and pressure than employees who feel forced to come in sick.

Well that's ridiculous my son had a full term off last year in year eleven just before his exams because he was critically ill

His school were nothing but helpful
I can understand schools encouraging kids not to go off on a whim but if they are in hospital there has to be lee way .

@x2boys but most of the time it's not just a cold. If everyone was a little more considerate people wouldn't end up in hospital

Exactly, thank you for confirming I'm not going insane!

Three separate periods in a year would trigger a process in my organisation , but could be over ridden following RTW as the longest time off you were hospitalised so would have medical evidence and presumably would've had a return to work plan after that absence