Ringing in sick?

[fatgirlswims]

My work place make it as difficult as possible to call in sick.

you have to phone the top boss between 6.30 and 7am

You can’t tell them in advance. You cant email or text.

you can’t tell you line manager
you can’t call in sick day one, have a day off, get signed and then email in or call someone else.

if you are signed off or told to self certify you only have to ring in once AFTER that. Other wise you have to ring in.

there is no practical need for this other than they need to know before 7.30.

someone rang in with a cold cough and were told they still
needed to come in as it was only a cold.
another called at 7.30 as they tried to come in but were to ill after getting ready.

I called in Wednesday and was signed off so I emailed the person responsible for sickness to say so. This is the bosses PA. I was then told off at my RTW about the “confusion” regarding not calling the boss.

EDIT. We have low rates of staff sickness.

AIBU to think must be a deterrent

Yikes! Do you start work at 9am usually? Has anyone ever tried complaining about this policy? 😂

Never heard of employer insisting you come to work if you self certify.
I thought that’s illegal.

Regarding the calling in procedure - it does sound perfectly clear. Call the big boss within a fixed period of time. I get it if they have to arrange cover and messages are flying in overnight from different places - that would be confusing.

If it deters people from calling in sick then surely that’s ok? If they were sick enough, they’d call in.

Sounds confusing, but I don't think it's that unusual. Annoying, isn't it?!
They probably are trying to deter people from calling in sick unnecessarily (which I'm sure isn't the case with you).
Hope you feel better soon.

Are you in the UK? This sounds very unusual.

Sounds like the school I work in.

What if they have a phone phobia?

I don't see why it's unusual. I've never worked anywhere where it was acceptable to email or text. When I was teaching you had to call before 7.30am, and call at 2.30pm to say whether you'd be in the next day 😢. You had to call every day unless you'd been signed off with a sick note.

Having to call in person is the norm I would have thought.

Unless it's covered by reasonable adjustments I'd say you follow the same procedures as everyone else.

Yeah in my last workplace we always had to call too.

Its the last thing that you feel like doing.

But they make you call, to make everyone stressed about it, so then less people take time off.

It works for them. If they made the sick process easy, everyone would be calling in sick

Standard procedure in most places, except that you wouldn't always need to talk to the "top boss" and it wouldn't always need to be that early. However, you yourself have said that the workplace need to know by 7.30am, so the time slot is fair enough and the other managers may not want to take calls that early.

I don't think someone should be told to come in with a cold if they're too ill to do so, but without knowing all of the context/detail, it's hard to comment on that.

Having to call every day unless signed off is completely normal.

I start at 8.30.

I don’t think anyone has challenge it but other things that have been challenged they simply say “it’s policy” over and over again.

om ok after 10 weeks but Inwas very unwell and felt terrible for being off sick. I didn’t not want to call in.

As someone said on another thread.

Employers get references for us, if only we could get references for them!

There are so many things that i was not about my job before i started here

Nope never had to do that in all my years working. I can just WhatsApp my line manager now. I’ve been lucky I guess!

Whatsapp! Wow that is informal.

I have to ring an absence line

Yanbu.
My workplace has just gone over to having to actually phone in. I'm terrified of being ill and having to do that. Why do I want a 30 second chat about not coming in? An email did the job. Especially if I've been ill in the night, I don't want to set myself back by having to set an alarm to call my flippin' boss at 9am when I should be sleeping.

They do it to stress you out, to make you so stressed that you won't call in sick

A phone call ensures that someone is aware of your absence, as you will actually speak to a person, you don't know when an email will be seen.
And at 9am you shouldn't be sleeping, you should actually be working!

We could email or text as soon as we knew, then we would have to call in the day of. Say I was sick at 4AM, I would email then and call at 9AM, but if you started feeling sick out of hours we were told to email or text asap. DH lets people text in but he trusts his employees and they’re a small team. My dad works with a lot of builders, so he makes them call in because “if they’re pulling a sicky I want to at least see if their sick voice is good”.

Quite normal to have to call in sick daily unless signed off. Not sure about the top boss thing but I expect this is to cut sickness levels as it is a massive cost to employers. What do you mean when you say you can’t tell them in advance? How do you know in advance that you are going to be sick?

@Mumof2wifeof1crazytimes I had dental operation! The second one and the first I went back and it was a disaster and went of sick after two days of hell, so I told them for the second one I need four days off and I still had to ring in sick.

Imagine phoning in sick and your boss saying nope not good enough you "have to" come in?! Fuck right off. I'd be looking for another job ASAP who the fuck do these people think they are

I have phone phobia but that is a me problem and I need to get over it

She means 9am if she’s off sick and wants to be asleep.

My work we call leave an vmail and then follow up with a text or email as bosses don’t start or switch their phones on until 9am.

The reason you have to call is so that someone definitely knows. What if yout email your manager and they are off sick or on leave or in meeting all morning and not checking mail etc so dont see the email?

The calling is not just for fun. It is so there is no way the message is missed

I think it depends on what type of job you work in to whether this is normal, I used to work for NHS and we had to ring daily before work for staffing numbers as obviously they need a certain amount of staff on the ward.
I now manage my own diary in the community and can email before my start time if I am unwell