I’m calling in sick to play golf

How many people work for companies that allow its employees to accrue sick leave each month, capped at a certain number of days? OK, you can put your hands down. Nearly everyone raised their hands.

Do you know anyone who has called in sick when they were perfectly healthy? Maybe they caught Spring Fever and wanted to play golf, or needed a “mental health day”.

Call me old fashioned, but I was brought up to believe that sick leave was to be used only when you were actually sick. In my book, if you call in sick when otherwise healthy, you’re being dishonest. Sick leave isn’t meant to be used so you can sleep in, get an extra day off before or after the weekend, or maybe even tack on a couple of days to a vacation.

Yes, I know the responses.
“Sick leave is a ‘use or lose it’ benefit, so if I don’t take my sick days, I will lose them when I retire or take another job.”

How about this one?
“If my employer paid me for my sick days when I left, then I wouldn’t have to take them.”

We’ve all heard someone say,
“I had a doctor’s appointment or a parent-teacher conference at school so I needed to use my sick leave because my company doesn’t give me any time off.”

While I would agree that not every employer is always willing to help an employee with taking time off for a doctor’s appointment or a parent-teacher conference, in many instances, it is possible to schedule around someone’s work schedule.

Sick leave is not an entitlement like vacation, it is an insurance policy. Employers provide the benefit so you don’t come to work sick and you get paid for staying home to get healthy.

Think of it like life insurance. Most employers provide you with basic life insurance coverage, but you wouldn’t think of using the benefit, would you? If you do use the benefit, it means you’re dead. In the case of sick leave, shouldn’t you only be using the benefit when you’re actually sick?

Not only is calling in sick when healthy wrong, misuse of sick leave can get you fired. It is also inconsiderate to other collegues. If you are a shift worker, when you are out sick, someone else is going to have to cover your shift, either through mandatory overtime or getting called in on a day off. I am betting that the person calling in sick when healthy doesn’t ever think about the inconvenience to his or her fellow employee.

At most companies, only a small percentage of people who call in sick are being dishonest. The problem is that lost time costs are enormously expensive to the employer. The most conservative estimates of lost time are that for every day someone is not at work, the costs run between 2 and 5 times someone’s pay. If that sounds extreme, think about paying the person who called in sick, the person who had to be called in from home, the overtime, the lost productivity, and the administrative burden on the employer to track the lost time.

Now, let’s say you work for a company with 10,000 employees. The average wage is $15 per hour, and 10 percent of the work force calls in sick each year. Another 20 percent take FMLA, and another 2 percent are out on workers compensation or disability. The average number of days out due to absences are 5 per year. The cost to this employer can run from $4 million to about $20 million a year.

What employee wouldn’t prefer to have at least some of that money in their pocket?