Dealing with sick leave abuse

Sick leave benefits are an attractive incentive to hire good employees. What often happens with sick leave is that employees take advantage of it and use it the same way they do for their vacation time. Sick leave abuse often happens during the holidays and during the summer months when employees want to go away on quick vacations. The problem with sick leave abuse is that employers are forced to cover the worker absence. Employers need to pay for the lost production costs, and other employees will have to cover the work that the sick employee normally does. Unscheduled sick leave can cost employers $602 per employee each year. This is a lot of money to spend on lost production costs.

You will incur even more costs if you have to hire temp employees to cover the work of the sick employees. When employees use a lot of sick leave, they start to leave a bad taste in their co-workers mouths. Morale can quickly sink and this means lower productivity for your company.

If you take away sick leave, you will increase the spread of illness in the office. The employees that honestly use their sick leave for its intended purpose are being punished because they now need to come into the office when they are barley able to function. Companies like to have perfect attendance, but it isn't always feasible. When employees don't have access to sick leave, they may search for a new job that does offer this benefit. Sick leave benefits increase employee morale because they know they can take off time if they are sick or if their children are sick.

You can crack down on sick leave abuse by limiting the sick leave hours that are available to the employees that violate sick leave. Take a look at how often they have called in sick and look for a pattern. If you notice they are suddenly sick on a snow day, you can probably assume they are at the ski slopes. If you try to call them a few hours later, you may not even be able to get a hold of them because they are out playing on their "sick day". Be up-front with your employees about sick leave and let them know they can face termination if they do not use sick leave for its intended purpose.

If you suspect an employee is abusing sick leave, ask them to provide medical documentation if they claim they visited the doctor when they were sick. Ask them about the number of days they have come in late, left early, or called-in sick. You also need to look at the department that employee works in, do their co-workers use a lot of their sick leave? Try to find out why so many employees are abusing their sick leave before you just assume they are abusing their sick leave.

Teach your mangers how to handle sick leave. Tell them that they cannot accept every excuse that employees have about sick leave. This means if it snows and you know a particular employee likes to snow-ski, don't let them use sick leave if they seemed perfectly healthy the day before. Saying "no" to your employees will let them know you are serious about cracking down on sick leave abuse and that it will not be tolerated.

Some companies actually offer incentives to their employees that do not abuse their sick leave. Some good incentives include offering a sick leave cash-out when they retire or a conversion of sick leave to vacation time if they did not use their sick leave for 12 months. If people know they will receive something for not abusing the sick leave policy, they are likely to stay with the company and respect the rules and policies.