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

[OneOpenRedShaker]

I know some people who treat sick leave as an entitlement and plan/schedule when to use it, even when they’re not seriously ill. I’m curious to know if anyone else does this, or if most people reserve it for when they’re genuinely sick. Do you view sick leave as a right to use as needed, or is it something that should be used sparingly?

I don’t think so. I’m undergoing chemo. I couldn’t do a full day in the office due to tiredness or the infection risk. Wfh lets me work as much as I can and then log off. So they get half a days work out of me most days rather than 5 months on sick leave. Win win.

I only really use it if I literally can't work. Another time I had a horrible cold for about three weeks that I couldn't shift at all and just felt shattered and unable to get over it, so I took a couple of days then as I just needed to get better and not have it drag out. I was honest about it too.

I have dependents so have to take time off for illness and appointments with them, so I tend to just get on with it, as I wouldn't want to get struck with really bad flu like I've had before and then be in trouble for taking too much leave. I hate other people covering for me too.

No, i only use it when really unwell.
Last time was at the end of 2023 when i had a nasty dose of covid, and that was my first sick leave since 2018.

I have a colleague who must have about a month off "sick" over the course of a year and it annoys me as its always in the lead up to or tagged to the end of her A/L.

Save the NHS eh.. people like you have destroyed it. I have a good friend who works in HR for an NhS hospital and this is a very common issue. No wonder there's no frigging money!! Shame on you.

Wow…Interesting. I wonder if a lot of people do that in nursing ?

Also wondering if you think better pay would discourage people from doing this?

Back in the olden days about 20 yrs ago the company I worked for used Bradford Factor to manage sickness and we all extended our sick leave to several days even if we only needed 1 because counter intuitively it makes the calculation better to have longer periods of absence than shorter ones.

Thinking aloud here but I feel this use of long term sick - basically ensuring you only work half the year- wouldn’t wash in the US.

Part of that is down to their work “ethic” /“addiction” ( whatever you want to call it!) but I’m also wondering if it’s partly because they get paid so much more.

As much as people shouldn’t take the piss I wonder if some of it is due to people working so much for so little pay?

I used to work in a U.S. company and an entry level role in London was £20K per year salary and the same role in NYC was something like $50K which is around £37,000. It also had health insurance as part of it too.

According to this thread it’s happening a lot in the NHS with nurses and others. Nurses get paid way more in the States.

It would be interesting to see if sickness has risen since around 2010 which is I think when wages started to stagnate.

I do think we have a real problem with our cost of living vs wages that needs to be tackled.

As far as I’m aware I think it’s more common in the states, where employees get little annual leave, and only a small number of paid sick days. Very unreasonable to do this in the UK and you would soon face a disciplinary I think.

Wow…Interesting. I wonder if a lot of people do that in nursing ?

@Apotofgold

I've been a nurse for over 30 years and can count on one hand the number of sick days I've had

Not one since prior to Covid

There are piss takers everywhere, they should be picked up through the absence policy and referred to OH

I never have. I rarely take sick days. But like someone up thread working from home you were encouraged to still work even if you felt terrible. And I've done that. I'm determined not to do so again.

I know people who've had double their leave entitlement and nothing is ever done about it.

If I've got a cold and feeling a bit crap I WFH rather than go into the office (like today. Sneezing everywhere!) that means I can use sick leave for when I'm really unable to work. I generally in that case very rarely have time off sick. I think the last time was a couple of days in August 2023 when I was completely burnt out and MIL had just died so I was trying to prop up DH too. I'm lucky that I have a very generous holiday allowance though as I choose to 'buy' extra annual leave each year.

Anecdotally, over the years I have known of quite a few nurses who have had long periods of sick leave multiple times, but then of course as you say there are people like that everywhere including my own workplace.

So I did some digging to get more of a broader view on this beyond my own limited knowledge -and from what I can see NHS staff sickness rates (not necessarily just nurses of course) have now reached their highest since 2010.

Which is kind of linked to what I was hinting at earlier about how 2010 signalled the start of a sharp decline in living and working standards with people being expected to do more for less basically and how that can impact sickness rate.

https://amp.theguardian.com/society/2023/jun/29/nhs-staff-sickness-rate-england-record-high

And it’s 3.6% higher than the average public sector sickness rate.

Nope, a large technology company.

Hope your recovery journey goes well

Senior management sleeping on the job. In much despised local authority they'd be out on their ear ( having followed HR process of course)

Nope, I haven't had a day off sick in nearly two years. Don't get wrong, I get days where I'd love nothing more than to just phone in sick and chill in bed watching Netflix, but sods law I'd pull a sickie then the next week be genuinely ill and have to call in.

Pulling a sickie just feels like I'm asking for a migraine or stomach bug the following week 😂

Because it is being misused and abused by many in the same way that WFH is. The person I am referring to works for the 2 hours only!

Because WFH permits suboptimal working ( or minimal work) for those who choose to do so!

I don’t but others do. In saying that, I’m in the US, we have two weeks of leave for the year. We have to accrue sick time. I’m also hourly paid, but usually have to do a couple of hours extra each week. Although I get paid for the time, there’s no adjustment to the accrual of vacation of sick hours, so it only accrues based on my contracted hours. A colleague is contracted for more hours than me, but currently does the same. He accrues based on his contracted hours too, and also gets paid for the missing hours he’s not doing. It’s unfair but there’s nothing I can do about it and jobs are limited in this area right now.

It's not being "abused", they ARE doing voluntary work on the day. How does this negatively impact you? The CS supports staff doing voluntary roles.

I know they work the two hours only (as far as you know, and as far as you've said here), a d I mentioned that, but that may well be acceptable to their employer.

It's only three bloody days a year. Leave them to it!

Trust me, when you are ill with flu, high fever etc, working a full day is horrible, even if in PJs from home. My role is hybrid but it seems to be management expectation these days that people just carry on WFH when ill instead of taking the day off. It's a dreadful culture. I had to work through 4 bouts of covid and stomach bugs. I haven't been able to take time off since covid apart from a fortnight for complex pelvic surgery.

Yes,this. I may be a bit superstitious but that's how it ended couple of times for me.

Which has nothing to do with the post you were replying to, which was about WFH allowing someone who was otherwise too sick to go into work to carry on working.

My employer has 800 employees in the UK and only 60 hotdesks in our one office in London - good luck getting everyone into the office at the same time...

Hi, it doesn't negatively impact me personally but demonstrates the division between those whose roles doesn't permit WFH and those who do ( tending to be middle and upper classes). My opinion is also based on my experience of people who are WFH who I meet at the hairdressers/ allotment/ school runs. I personally know people who admit to ' moving the 🖱 ' as evidence that they are 'Working '.! Says it all

And I agree that my comments were nothing to do with original post, sorry. I diverted