You would have to be a really sick person to agree with this…
According to pwc, the British do it twice as often as the Americans and Japanese.
Within the UK, if you happen to be a civil servant or state employee then the chances are that you will be doing it 20% more often than the average UK worker.
After polling over 2,000 firms and public sector employees around the world, pwc found that UK workers have an average of 10 days unscheduled absence from their jobs each year.
This is approximately twice the level that is found in the US (5.5 days) and Asia-Pacific (4.5 days), but roughly the same as Western Europe (9.7 days).
They estimated that the total sick days taken across the UK cost the economy in the region of £32 billion a year.
Richard Phelps, HR consulting partner at PwC, says that “absenteeism is a malaise for British business.
With sickness accounting for the lion’s share of absence, the question for employers is what can be done to improve health, morale and motivation. The line between ‘sickie’ and ‘sickness’ can be blurred, with disenchantment at work sometimes exacerbating medical conditions or preventing a speedy return”.
Whilst genuine sickness should be looked upon sympathetically there are no doubt a certain number of people who maybe take a day off due to “sickness” when in fact they aren’t really too ill to go to work but instead just fancy an extra day’s holiday or two.
Now, as a lot of you are members or students of professional bodies I’m sure you’re too ethical to throw a “sickie” and will only be out of the office on sick leave if it is a genuine illness.
Less scrupulous friends of yours though may have noticed that there are various sites on the internet that provide advice on how to take a “sickie” from the office.
One bit of advice is that when phoning up your boss to tell him or her that you are ill you should “make the phone call to your boss whilst lying on your back as you automatically sound groggy”.
This also means that you don’t even have to get out of bed to make the call…
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