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15 individual days off a year has the same Bradford factor as a full year (220 working days). Just saying. I'd look at the 2x2 hi/lo performer and hi/lo sickness. you'll find the hi performers who still take hi sickness. These people may now be able to work from home. I haven't bothered to put in much sick leave, although this week I am still wfh and on COVID leave.
This topic is one of the quickest ways to cause arguments and divide a workplace! Such a minefield depending upon the makeup of the workforce and the type of work.
At my old job some people were in what was called the "old contract" that gave 6 months full sick pay per year. Mine had 9 weeks but others only got 2. We also had the Bradford scoring system too, 3 in a 12 month period triggered a meeting which always resulted in a written warning.
There was one colleague who would always go sick with something hard to diagnose every October, just before our busiest period and would always return every March after 'recuperating' with family in Portugal! She did this for the whole 10 years she was there and of course it would always be a phased return. We still don't know to this day how she got away with it for so long, must have had dirt on one of the managers. Lots of other people would take the odd 2-3 days and end up with written warnings, sanctions etc. But I have to say that whenever anyone had a major issue (cancer, mental health, death in the family) they would allow you more time than you were entitled to, check up on you and give you support if required. I experienced this when I went through a mental breakdown due to various issues, some at work and others in private, and I saw the other side of things then. Had 3 months off on full pay, a phased return and paid days off for any medical appointments or coaching sessions I needed. The boss who was nicknamed Cruella De Ville was amazing throughout and I saw it happen to others who went through cancer and the loss of a young son.
So to answer the original question: depends on the circumstances and the individual in question. Personally I'd say around 10-15 days a year would be pretty normal if they were in 2-3 groups. Lots of single days is just taking the piss!
Seems to be mostly sports injuries at my workplace. Netball is pretty vicious for a non contact sport it would appear.
I am either seen as a pisstaker or rubbish mountain biker 🤔
We also get a fair amount of work related strains and muscle problems due to the nature of the work.
Netball is pretty vicious for a non contact sport it would appear.
Having to stop dead when the ball arrives on hard ground will ruin joints and muscles very quickly.
Being off sick definitely depends on the work environment and nature of job. If the job and pay is good and the environment nice enough I've found people have little to no time off sick and will endeavour to come in with mild flu/ colds etc and plough through. Before I WFH hardly anyone was ever off sick in our office whereas the wife's workplace (NHS rest bite care facility) was a carousel of staff sickness and astounded me with how many staff were off at least once a month if not two or three times a month (for many years this included the wife) plus a large number of long term sick staff....many of which were blagging it (or so we believe with good reason). The simple reason for this was low pay and very challenging conditions. Most staff there were very beleaguered and run down or the sheer mundanity of night shifts with hardly anything to do just got too much.
It also didn't help the cause that the NHS staff got full paid sick leave for months and months, so many staff simply think why not take the time as it won't affect the salary.
My field (engineering for small employers) although the pay, conditions and work satisfaction were good enough the employers tended not to support sick pay so any time off was at your cost and this was probably a factor in the low rates of sickness.
It also didn’t help the cause that the NHS staff got full paid sick leave for months and months, so many staff simply think why not take the time as it won’t affect the salary.
I worked for a couple of years in our local NHS, running a small IT Team. I halved the sickness rate. Mainly because not only did I not take any (unlike the previous Manager), but the first time someone was sick and came back I did a 'return to work' interview.
To say it caused a shock was an understatement. Put a good 'line in the sand'.
But, as someone above said, if you're properly ill then totally supportive and when one of my team needed an (horrible) operation, I made sure that she only came back with her GP's 'blessing'.
I’ve been at my current job for 19 years.
I’ve spoken to many other employees who have been issued written warnings for taking 2x single days off in a 12 month period.
Yet, when i fell in the yard a few years ago and ****ed my leg up, they were brilliant, i was off for 22 weeks, my manager called me every week to check how i was and I didn’t get any grief at all.
I am hardly ever off work/don’t get customer complaints though.
Some of the people who complained about being warned were piss takers.
I wonder if employees who get customer complaints/low standard of work are the ones who get (more) grief for being off.
I've been really fortunate with my health and went about 10 years without a day off. Then a few years ago a had a car crash that saw me take two days off. A few weeks later my back 'went' quite spectacularly. I was off Monday and Tuesday, went back Wednesday but could hardly move so was off again on Thursday and Friday. I could have self certified for 5 days but as I went back on the Wednesday it counted as two absences. These combined with my car crash made three short term absences, triggered a Absence Management process and sent me off down a path of HR interrogation and warning.
That made me quite cross and genuinely made me wonder why I bothered taking pride in my good attendance. My employer placed no value whatsoever on 10 years of absence free employment.
Anyway, I got COVID, ended up in hospital and had a month off. That showed them!
I saw the topic on mobile and correctly guessed who posted it.
Yeah and I am asking about the same employee.
PreCOVID - My place in a fit of insanity (probably to be "fair" to the factory workforce) came out and said that if you worked in the office but had the means to work from home, if you were mildly ill you were not allowed to work from home, you had to call in sick.
2 things happened:
1) loads of ill people came into the office and gave their lovely germs to the rest of the office.
2) Sickness sky rocked. Because there were more ill people and they had to call in sick.
This policy was quietly forgotten about 3 months later.
Yet, when i fell in the yard a few years ago and **** my leg up, they were brilliant, i was off for 22 weeks, my manager called me every week to check how i was and I didn’t get any grief at all.
Funny that, where there's blame there's a claim...
I'm never off unless it's something serious. It's been cycle commuting accidents (not my fault) that have had me off work - broken spine was 7 months. Fortunately had full pay for most of it. I've been at my employer over 15 years, but three absences kicks in the HR processes to check. Where that's happened for me it's accident or surgery issues. Touch wood, nothing since returning from my broken spine 6 years ago !
Cougar the Bradford factor is pretty useful as it penalised people with lots of short term absence
Did you really mean "penalise" here? The rest of your post doesn't read as such.
That's the crux of what I (and others) have been saying, why it this inherently bad? I'm off Mon-Weds-Fri with a rotten cold, that's a higher score than someone who's off for five consecutive weeks. It needs investigating sure, "why were you off?" - "I had a cold." - "OK mate, just checking, off you pop," but penalising?
I think it’s also important to consider colleagues when someone else is off a lot regardless of the underlying cause.
That's surely just a staffing issue, if they can't take the hit of someone being off then they're understaffed. What do they do about holidays?
I saw the topic on mobile and correctly guessed who posted it.
Yeah and I am asking about the same employee.
The baby sitter ?
@cougar penalising may not be the right word, what it does is actively highlight people who take lots of short sick days. It's a good tool for HR to use to check their managers are doing proper back to work interviews etc. It's not intended to be used to discipline people because they have hit a certain level. It's the trigger to ensure an appropriate conversation is had which might be how can we support, we know you're off with X / Y / Z but it's not an issue as you've kept us informed so don't worry or it might be that's the third Monday you've had off with vague illness issues that correspond to Rovers playing a home match on a Sunday (the last one was a real example for me, the guy was a total p**s head and ended up with bladder cancer which was pretty horrific, if his continued lifestyle absences had been dealt with sooner it might have given him a chance to change if he knew his job was on the line, unfortunately my predecessor was the type of manager who didn't do absence management and as a result certain individual took massive liberties much to the anger of the rest of the work force who didn't).
Edit: Duh, wrong thread
That’s surely just a staffing issue, if they can’t take the hit of someone being off then they’re understaffed. What do they do about holidays?
holidays dont stop because someones on the sick .
YOu just end up with below minimum staffing.
2013 my worst ever I had 6 months off. Fractured tibial plateau beginning of the year then from December till mid January off for knee Arthoscopy to repair meniscus.
2014-2019 zero sick days
2019 no sick days just time off for Septoplasty to nose
2020 Zero sick days but ten days isolation for covid so not classed as sickness in the NHS
2021 9 days Kidney stones
2022 5 days after being punted off my motorbike broken 5th metatarsal, only stayed off till swelling reduced and the naproxen kicked in and I didn’t need codiene.
@cougar penalising may not be the right word, what it does is actively highlight people who take lots of short sick days.
Again, why? Why is me being off sick on Mon-Weds-Fri exponentially worse than Mon-Tues-Weds?
Netball is pretty vicious for a non contact sport it would appear.
I was at a real life party the other week and one of the women was showing off her nice wrist cast - netball!
Again, why? Why is me being off sick on Mon-Weds-Fri exponentially worse than Mon-Tues-Weds?
Because by self evidence you were fine to work on Tuesday and Thursday
The Bradford scale isn't meant for giving written warnings it's for folk with big teams or bad managers to be alerted to have a conversation with their team should such occurances happen.
There will always be fringe cases that don't fit and those are explained away by conversations.
If your managed out the business directly via the Bradford scale you were leaving one way or the other anyway
Just to add about medical records. They would never be released to an employer without signed consent. So whatever the contract mentioned in page 1 might have said I doubt it would be enforceable.
Because by self evidence you were fine to work on Tuesday and Thursday
So what? I felt better, then I got worse. You're penalising me for coming into the office when I probably shouldn't?
The Bradford scale isn’t meant for giving written warnings it’s for folk with big teams or bad managers to be alerted to have a conversation with their team should such occurances happen.
Sure, of course a business of a certain size needs rules in place to ensure that everyone is treated equally. But again (again), why is this a favourable metric? Someone has a month off and it doesn't register, someone else has three non-consecutive days off and they're talking to HR. It makes no sense.
How does it work with kids being sick? Your kid throws up at the kindergarten for whatever reason and someones got 24 hours baby sitting ahead of them. Or is that annual holiday?
It makes no sense.
Just because you can't see it doesn't mean it doesn't make sense.
You’re penalising me for coming into the office when I probably shouldn’t?
So you aknowledge you were coming in when you shouldn't and that makes it my problem ?
If someone is off for a month we treat that as long term sick, different process, different support. For the 3 days, it shouldn't be automatically to HR, should be noted in the back to work interview and the onus is on the manager to confirm HR intervention isn't needed. Managers should manage absence HR only get involved when it gets serious or goes wrong. The problem is many managers see it as an HR issue and Miss things they should engage with or fail to nip inappropriate absence in the bud before it becomes a major issue.
How does it work with kids being sick? Your kid throws up at the kindergarten for whatever reason and someones got 24 hours baby sitting a
Look up parental leave legislation.
Your kid throws up at the kindergarten for whatever reason and someones got 24 hours baby sitting ahead of them. Or is that annual holiday?
Holiday in the first instance, then followed by leave for emergency care for a dependent in our company. We're allowed a week off for emergency care by manager approval. I can't imagine a manager declining.
I had several years of compassionate leave/emergency care one or two days per quarter, taking my sister to the oncologist - that would have been about 25 on the Bradford scale. I made up the time anyway, so it was never going to be an issue. Normally when the serious brown stuff hits the spinny thing, good companies will do the right thing. I was thinking of Cruella up there.
Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it doesn’t make sense.
Why don't you explain it to me then? I've asked several times now.
So you aknowledge you were coming in when you shouldn’t and that makes it my problem ?
I said "probably". Are you recommending I should take more time off?
Why don’t you explain it to me then? I’ve asked several times now.
Because you keep repeating the same shite .
It's a statistics tool that highlights potential issues to be investigated .
Lots of short term absences outside of your whataboutery are a massive red flag for potential serious issue or pisstaking employee
... why?
Why indeed. You have a think about that and come back when you've figured it out.
Because each time you go off work your manager has to redistribute your work amongst the rest of the team and each time you come back the manager has to redistribute the team workload again and do a RTW meeting with you.
So in your hypothetical week where you're sick Monday, Wednesday, Friday and work Tuesday and Thursday your manager has potentially had the weeks workload plan changed 5x and done 3 extra meetings with you.
Every work contract I’ve signed in the last 25 years has included a clause giving the employer the right to see my medical records
Seems OTT. Sure, they can ask. But a ‘right’ to see doesn’t seem compatible with GDPR or medical practice. Even after authorising an insurance company to request a medical report my surgery asked me to provide consent to complete the report. Then to review it and consent to its issue.
Even our occ health people need consent to release a report to us, we've paid for, from the employee. People's medical conditions are private, however if it is impacting their ability to do a job an employer needs to know so they can make reasonable adjustments and provide support. A blank refusal to share info is more likely to end up in a quick dismissal these days. You've probably got more protection if you disclose your issues, may even be a protected condition.
I asked the parental leave question as this topic seems to have a very 'macho' element of people liking to be tough on sickness. Soo.. to.. stir stuff up
3 periods of sick leave for depression - fire them?
3 periods of sick leave for self induced injury i.e. falling off youre bike - fire them?
Good luck using either as justification without ending up in a tribuneral.
Appreciate the points re: contractual requirements. I've never liked them but did want the jobs.
Ultimately though as per @stumpyjon - of you're trying to argue you've got genuine medical reasons as to why your absence rate is high but then turn round and say 'but I'm not going to tell you what they are and I'm not going to let you speak to my Dr to confirm' I can't see that ending well.
As to the OPs question. It's difficult and without knowing the reason for the absences it's difficult to answer.
I personally hate the Bradford Index as it is rarely used in the correct way. Mrs D's trust uses it and she ended up on a Stage 4 final disciplinary following severe depression and suicide attempts because the index said she should be.
At the other end of the spectrum I was a few weeks into a new job and needed a lot of time off due to my faulty bowel but happened to have gone back to working for my old boss who I have known for 20 years so it was no issue.
My wife, a nurse on a busy ward, is now 'allowed' 4 days off sick before triggering a disciplinary process. I can basically have whatever time off I need because my boss knows I'm not an idiot and won't take the piss.
3 periods of sick leave for depression – fire them?
3 periods of sick leave for self induced injury i.e. falling off youre bike – fire them?
That precisely what should not happen. Ideally three incidents would trigger a conversation, in the former example it should be to ascertain if work is contributing or can support (or possibly start thinking about an exit strategy, unfortunately depression is the new back problem, very difficult to distinguish between people with real health issues and those swinging the lead), in the latter a discussion about changing lifestyle might be on orde, but even then I'd try and find out the cause of the injury, if it was 8ft gap jumps and table tops I'd be suggesting toning down the riding, if it was rtas travelling to work less of an issue. Being a manager is about being a grown up, unfortunately a lot of managers are quite infantile.
Being a manager is about being a grown up, unfortunately a lot of managers are quite infantile.
I find the issue is often, to make the process 'fair', managers are not allowed to use common sense and discretion as it gives ammunition to those who are taking the piss but then claim they're being treated differently to those who have genuine issues.
To be fair. Many managers are victims of the Peter principle.
Good front line infantry often don't make good managers.