Sick Leave and Personal Days

If a company offers employment options like flex-time or the opportunity to work from home, they also stand the chance of cutting back on unscheduled absences. With a flexible schedule, employees can rearrange their work times to attend to a personal situation like taking their child to the doctor in the morning. After their personal business is taken care of, they can still come in and put in a full day at the office and not have to use a personal day. The option to work at home can also cut down on an unscheduled absence if employees are too sick to report to work but healthy enough to perform their duties. Many such duties can be done at home with the help of a laptop or other device that is useful in telecommuting. Another benefit to this option is that other employees will stand less of a chance of coming down with an illness if the employee who is already sick just works from home.

If constant abuse of sick and personal days continue to be a problem between a company and a particular employee, more drastic measures can be taken. One tried and true method requires that the employer insist on a note from a doctor before allowing an employee who has been out for more than several days to return to work. Policies regarding raises or other rewards can also be tied directly to employees' attendance records, therefore encouraging them not to take an unscheduled absence.

In serious circumstances, an employee can be fired for taking too many days off. The employer should make sure that they have a legitimate case against the employee in this instance because many situations are covered by the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) and other laws that protect employees. If an employer is found to have wrongfully terminated an employee under one of these laws, it could stand to lose a considerable amount of money in a settlement.

But the best policies for reducing employee absenteeism have to do with creating a health workplace. Stephen Moir put it this way in an article on the subject that appeared in Personnel Today. "Staff wellbeing is about providing an environment that is conducive to people wanting to come to work and doing a good job. It is about having managers who manage well, and an organizational culture that is mature enough to recognize that a degree of absence is a natural side effect of employing real people. It is also about creating greater access to flexible working, and a broad range of benefits that motivate and encourage individuals. A truly successful approach to absence management is a holistic one that doesn't just do the hard stuff, but also thinks about the total package that you offer as an employer—friendly colleagues, access to learning opportunities, work-life balance, fair pay and rewards and so on."

SICK LEAVE AND PERSONAL DAY POLICIES FOR SMALL BUSINESSES

Small businesses that pay their employees by the hour often have no sick leave and personal day policies. In most cases, companies in this situation experience fewer cases of abuse of sick days off because when employees do not show up for work, then they do not get paid. Time clocks or official attendance ledgers are also used to let employers know exactly how many hours a particular employee works per day so that they can be paid accordingly. Of course, things like extended illnesses, a death in the family, or religious holidays can always force an employee to miss work.

For companies that employ salaried staff, a clear and defined policy for handling necessary sick days and personal days should be in place and followed carefully. In the case of an abuse of the system serious enough to motivate a termination, care must be taken. As Phillip M. Perry stated in Industrial Distribution: "If your business is small enough that you operate as the sole supervisor, you are still open to legal problems if you don't have a written policy followed to the letter. Employees who are terminated for excessive absenteeism will sue, claiming discrimination over those employees—possibly the ones who are more vital to your business success—who are absent just as often."

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