Sick leave strategy

[Determined]

Just wondering if anyone has implemented sick leave strategies such as:
1. Creating a pool for donated sick leave, to be allocated to those in need
2. Having no sick leave accrual, but employees take leave when they are genuinely sick

Do you have comments on the pros and cons for the above? For point 2, what sort of results were achieved?

thanks, Robyn

[Tiger]

I've a friend who worked for a large telco for 20 yrs and they applied your No. 2. I suspect the idea was born due to the asian ownership of this corporate (many Asian MNE owners deplore the amount of leave available in Australia). Of course this was a professional (white collar) environment where work expectations were high and all expected to perform, get the job done and so it worked very well. Having spent a lot of my working life in blue collar environments, I have to say that I doubt this would work, at least not in any of those orgs I've been.

Whilst somewhat inventive, I have doubts your number 1 idea would work across the board. I think it would have to be a special organization with that special kind of culture. It's a great idea, especially for the employees who do get seriously ill and, with chemo and the like, have to be off work for months.

Be interesting to see what others have experienced on this one.

Tiger

[Moz]

Are either 1 or 2 actually legal under the NES?

[Tiger]

Well you can certainly do more than the minimum prescribed under the NES but you make a good point, her No. 1 suggestion of banking it, may well be a problem. Unless of course you still have everyone their minimum 10 days
In the case of my telco example, it was just unlimited sick leave for everyone and with the exception of the call centre where there was some abuse (and policy was amended there so they had to produce a medical certificate after one day), the rest could be out sick for 3 days without a medical certificate but I understand it was largely down to the discretion of the dept manager.

Tiger

[Moz]

I have mixed feelings about imposing the doctor's certificate requirement, mainly because of the cost, which off course is increasing, and also because it tends to make life more difficult for the majority of employees who do not abuse their sick leave.

So often one can go to the doctor only to be told what you already know - you have a virus, usually unknown but likely to be the common cold virus, aka rhinopharyngitis, and unless you develop a secondary bacterial infection there's nothing they can do for you, other than write you a doctors cert, which some charge extra for!

Also, I can't help wondering how many people front up to work because they either don't want to incur the expense, can't get an appointment with their usual GP, or just can't be bothered. So they come to work and infect their colleagues.

I suspect most abuse are single days, often after a big night out. In which case their condition even though it was self inflicted, but they are still unfit for work.

In my experience I find people rarely take two of more consecutive days when they are not genuinely sick. But if they do, they're prepared to get a certificate anyway so there's not much you can do about it. At the end of the day, they only have so much sick leave. So whilst it can be annoying, I don't feel comfortable making life difficult for the majority of people, to try to stop the minority, which we seem to do a lot of in our society.

As for making the requirement for doctors certificates discretionary, that may be quite a risky path taking into consideration our current laws around adverse action and discrimination.