On the Absence of Sensible Sickness Absence Policies.
In an earlier piece on Medium, I wrote about how schools’ treatment of children’s health lays down the foundation of society’s problems with health and disability as a whole.
Giving children prizes for good attendance creates a culture that reinforces the belief that sickness is a choice, a sign of laziness, or just a bad attitude towards work.
“If you tried a bit harder you’d be a bit healthier.”
“There’s no need to be sick at all if you put your mind to it!”
“It’s amazing what disabled people can do when they try!”
Children leave school with these attitudes thoroughly entrenched, and take them with them into the workplace. They then become the people who make the rules, enforce the laws, and legislate against increased sick leave or maternity pay, and the whole cycle starts again.
But it makes no sense.
People who struggle back into work when they are ill not only are less capable at doing their jobs, they take longer to get better, and spread their illnesses to their colleagues, reducing productivity throughout the workplace. Removing themselves protects productivity, and the health of their co-workers. It’s simple, and should be being strictly reinforced by management as a matter of course.
“We are actively driving people with a vocation for these careers away…”
We already require a fit note from a doctor for any absence of more than seven days. The chances of people abusing the system are small, and should be weeded out by HR departments as a matter of course by processes that are already in place. The money and productivity saved would be reflected in increased job security and satisfaction, which currently remain appallingly low across the UK.
Countries where employees are offered options such as mental health days, increased paternity and maternity leave, more flexible sick leave, flexitime and shorter working days have better productivity and better happiness ratings as a society overall.
Right now, we are struggling to fill job vacancies in vital jobs like teaching, nursing, policing and social care because the working conditions we have created for those careers have become so repressive as to be unsustainable for any length of time. The people who do these jobs are the backbone of our society, and we are failing them, when we should be supporting them. We are actively driving people with a vocation for these careers away, to the extent that the government are now trying to bribe anyone into doing these jobs. It’s no wonder we are then left asking why they are no longer being done to the high standards they once were.
We cannot maintain career stability if we insist on working conditions that make employees ill, where we make nurses and teachers cover for each other without breaks so that they end up exhausted, or suffering repeated bladder infections because they’ve not been able to take toilet breaks for hours at a stretch. Social workers and the police are subject to greater levels of stress and burnout because of what they encounter on a daily basis. There is no simple off switch for violence, crime and families in crisis. Teachers still have little to no work/life balance: they arrive at school early to get paperwork and lesson plans prepared, and stay late to do the data entry that has replaced marking books. The admin is fast overwhelming the job of teaching, and they too are often now dealing with families in desperate need, filling a new social care role as poverty becomes an everyday spectre that haunts all levels of society.
And yet, in all these jobs, we only allow employees a limited number of sick days a year or subject them to disciplinary procedures.
Yep. Once they’ve had their sick day allowance, they’ve got to go into work, whatever they’ve come down with, or they can be sacked. And these allowance trigger points are set at as little as eight or even six calendar days. That’s in their contracts. It doesn’t matter if they’ve had a broken leg, or Ebola, or cancer. Or a stomach bug, and then the flu, and then tonsillitis. The trigger points can be as little as three incidents of absence, or even being absent on a Monday and a Friday, because that’s suspicious too, and can’t just possibly have happened by chance (hands up teachers who regularly lose weekends to illnesses they’ve struggled through during the week). You’ve got to suspect that whoever wrote that one into a sickness absence policy was an ex hard party-er, now reformed to a life of besuited, cold-hearted judgement.
“…something is profoundly wrong at the heart of how we treat the people we rely on to keep our society running.”
If an employee hits these trigger points, they are required to go through HR Sickness Absence meetings with their managers and HR representatives, and explain in depth why they either have been or are still absent. If still absent, they have to explain when they will be back at work, to the satisfaction of their employers and HR team. Of course these meetings can be held in their absence, if they aren’t well enough to attend, which, given they’re unable to work, is entirely likely. This can ultimately result in their employment being terminated.
I want to remind you again, these are our teachers, social workers, police and nurses. Our midwives, struggling to work 12 hour shifts running a fever because they cannot risk disciplinary procedures for taking another sick day. Our social workers, on call to families in desperate need when they are in desperate need themselves. How is this in any way justified? The fact that teaching, policing, nursing and social care are struggling to retain key staff for more than five years at a stretch shows that something is profoundly wrong at the heart of how we treat the people we rely on to keep our society running. Jobs are already remaining unfilled, and if Brexit happens, this will just get 100 times worse…
We cannot continue to accept this; but the changes we really need to make are changes in our society as a whole, and they need to start where I started this: at school. We need to be teaching our children that being ill isn’t a choice, or lazy, or something people are doing wrong. We need to stop giving prizes for attendance, and take attendance out of schools’ criteria for Ofsted scores. We need to spread the message that being ill is ok, and taking time out to get better is necessary, not just for your own health, but for the health of others around you.
In the meantime, we need to lobby for changes to repressive sickness absence procedures. They aren’t just harmful to employees, they offer no protection to employers either. This is what I don’t understand. So long as your staff’s absences are authorised by a doctor, and prolonged absence discussed and noted as a matter of course, there need be no cap on it. Your workplace is only as strong as its staff. If your staff feel happy, healthy and supported, then more gets done, more efficiently.
“these professions are falling apart before our eyes, and something needs to be done to stop it.”
And if employers are bothered about staff getting sick notes for things like ‘stress’, and this creating a sudden upsurge in staff taking days off sick, then look to your work conditions and how you need to improve them. Take responsibility and the opportunity to create the best workplace you can.
Every one of these workplaces has insurance that covers absences, and isn’t left struggling when an employee is ill. One of the reasons I know this is because part of my role in my previous job included liaising with HR for sickness cover. A process I became even more intimately acquainted with when I eventually lost that job due to a period of extended ill-health. I know exactly how badly this system works, from both sides of the table.
This happens all the time, and people accept it because it’s the way it’s done, it’s the contracts we signed, it’s the way it’s always been. But these professions are falling apart before our eyes, and something needs to be done to stop it, because some of the working conditions we are asking people to tolerate now wouldn’t look out of place in a Victorian history book.
I have talked to bright, committed young people who have gone into teaching and nursing and are now doing those jobs under sufferance, at the end of their tolerance, heartbroken and exhausted. It’s madness that the very people who have a vocation for these careers have to stop because they simply are not physically able to carry on much longer. To make it clear: they are not weak. They do not lack passion, or motivation. They’re the hardest working people I know, and they’re being driven into the ground.
So today, I’ve decided to start my first change.org petition. This is the time to make change. Please join me and sign and share this petition, because this isn’t just important, it’s vital.
