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 have also had colleagues take extended period of leave up to 6 months, worked out over a rolling 18 month period so absence triggers do not kick in.

My SIL (NHS) does this - she knows to the exact date when she can next go off sick without triggering the system.

And she always makes a miraculous recovery and is able to return to work on the very day her 6 months full pay is up and is due to switch to half pay.

I've worked in the NHS for 25 years and have only ever taken the odd day here and there when I have had flu or covid and been too ill to function properly.

one company I worked for we had 10 days paid sick per year and people actually used to use it all to get 38 days holiday

Where are the people working that allow people to so blatantly rinse it? Is it public sector?

Do I defraud my employer? No.

I don’t do it, I’ve had 2 sick days in the last 3 years.

however I do work with a couple of people who use their Sick leave each year . It’s so bloody frustrating, they take it off due to “mental health” and nothing can be done about it

No because I have shit loads of time off sick as it is without adding days off when I'm not sick!

This used to a work culture thing in a lot of council's years ago but thankfully policies have tightened up and it's not a thing anymore, especially as over the last 20 years new people would have entered the work place for the first time and not been exposed to the skive culture.

No, never. I think I have taken 2 days in the last 5 years. But then my manager doesn’t bat an eye or ask to me to take AL if I take a morning off kids’ sports day/school plays/concerts 1-2 times a term.

Nope. Don't get paid sick leave and ssp doesn't kick in till day 4.

I went from the office to the GP to the specialist to the ER to a room in the hospital once and a week later my boss called me and blamed me for everything that was going wrong in his life.
Then he fired me. While I was lying in a hospital bed.
Then he filed for bankruptcy.
Arsehole. He was a doctor, too.

If your absence is related to your disability then it can't be used against you, it would be against the disability act.

No idea what "allotted" sick days are though, not something our company have. Just a ridiculously low Bradford score trigger.

If we take a sick day immediately before/after AL we won't get paid without a fit note. They also look into patterns such as Friday/Monday

I have a funny feeling the people who abuse their employer’s sick leave policy also brag about how hard working they are and bitch about people on benefits…

No, I’ve never taken sick leave when I was not sick.

It pisses me off how people do this. We're lucky to have these rights, don't piss all over them! Sure I've pulled a few sickies when younger but wouldn't now and definitely wouldn't plan on taking regular sick leave as holiday...

Are you serious? 30 plus years in a university and oh yes, HR notice. I’ve taken hardly any sick days, but as a line manager I’m expected to monitor staff absences very closely.

If you’re arguing that HE is no longer strictly the public sector, I have a lot of friends in schools and management is very focused on absences there as well.

Perhaps the civil service is different? Not sure. But my relatives in the NHS tend to carry on working when they really shouldn’t, rather than merrily take the proverbial with sick leave.

No I tend to struggle on.
If I’m off ill then I am seriously ill.
I do get paid sick pay, but the company has extremely tight triggers. My colleague was genuinely ill and was off for 3 weeks. She is part time so that equates to 9 days. This alone triggered stage 1. Any more time off within the next 12 months and she would be on stage 2. This is on my mind so I tend not to ring in sick.
Personally speaking, I would not employ anyone who had had either:

1. long periods off sick
2. frequent time off sick.

DH gets 3 fully paid "sick days" a year, if he doesn't use them then he loses them. He usually keeps them and uses them when the kids are off school Ill or on holiday and we're stuck for childcare.
If it's in your entitlement then why wouldn't you use it?

Never
I'd only get statutory sick pay ..I can't afford to live off that !!

In US people get an allocation of PTO (paid time off) that covers holiday and sick leave.
This isn't legal in UK because we're allowed to keep our jobs if we go long term sick. Anyone who treats sick leave as additional holiday in the UK deserves dismissal imo.

I don't get sick leave. I'm baffled at so many people being sick multiple times a year and not having any sort of welfare checks or sickness management. Its very bad form and atrocious work ethic, and their Bradford Factors must be pretty high.
Doesn't sound like some employers give a shit about the welfare of their staff either.

I've had two days off since December 2023 (the whole family had norovirus). Before that I had covid in July 2022 and worked from home after having two (unpaid) sick days.

Of course it is but Mumsnet seems to have a good few people with little or no moral compass. It would serve them right if they were genuinely ill having taken the piss.

Birthdaymom would you feel the same about all employees using their ’entitlement?’
So it's ok for your child’s teacher to go off sick for a month. Or your dentist to cancel your appointment because they are off sick. Or trains to be cancelled due to staff sickness.

Everybody is ultimately a loser when people abuse the system in this way.

It means that genuine illness is assumed to be fake and leads to policies whereby you have a sick leave 'allowance', which, as PP said, completely defeats the object of the nature of genuine sickness: that it's unpredictable, not able to be planned in advance and affects you for as long as it affects you, rather than for a standard 'allowed' period of time.

You get ridiculous circumstances whereby ungrateful people who have been lucky enough not to get sick at all for ages, and feel aggrieved because of this, take time off 'because they haven't used their allowance' whilst people who are genuinely sick for an extended period/regular occasions and should still be at home in bed have no choice but to come in anyway, because they've 'used up' their sick-leave allowance. Madness; and terribly unfair.

I wonder if the former people ever look enviously at disabled folk using blue-badge spaces - with all the associated challenges and pains in being able to get in and out of their cars - feeling unfairly done-by when they have to use a smaller, further away standard space when jumping in and out of the car and racing around the supermarket?

I don't deliberately use it I don't feel ill at all, but if I need to be off, I've started making sure I use the next day to be 100% right before going back.

I used to rush back and struggle on, only for 'short periods' people were taking to be considered not real if you were fine for work the next day, and people running into far more issues and questions if they needed 3 X 1 day in a rolling 12 month period than 2 x 3-4 days in the same.

I've never been aware of this happening in the UK, but my friend who has lived and worked in Australia for 20+ years says it's pretty common there. They only have a statutory entitlement to 10 days paid sick leave and whilst they can carry it over into subsequent years, she says most of her colleague will plan to use it up and then sometimes have to take holiday leave to cover actual sickness!