sick days

Hi

I own small business with couple of staff , one employee, is taking i think to many sick day, always friday monday, and extra day sometimes.

what is procedure regarding sick leave. I would like to write something in new contracts to stop this abuse of sick leave. Can i limit amount of paid sick days per year.

Thanks

You don't have to pay sick leave. Many places don't.

What is in their original contract, not sure how you can change and existing contracts, or whats the best way to do that,

Where I work you get X amount of uncertified days. Sick days on a Fri/Mon require a cert from a doctor. More than 2 days together require a cert and you can only take y amount of certified sick days. There a limit to the total X and Y days we can get. After that its unpaid and you have to have a company doctor check you. I know places wheres there no paid sick leave at all, or paid maternity. Some places have a limited sick leave, like all days require a cert or there a very limited amount allowed.

I don't know a lot about HR, but I'd get a good HR person in to re-write the contracts and advise you of your best option from an employment law aspect. A friend of mine had a similar problem (again usually with Friday/Monday being sick days), got an independent HR person and she sorted out all their problems.

If you PM me, i can give you the number of the girl she used. She'd highly recommend her and she didn't break the bank either.

IBEC http://www.ibec.ie/ibecweb.nsf/wHome?OpenForm may also be of help

Some companies operate a system where each employee is allowed a fixed number of paid sick days per year, say, five.

If the employee doesn't take them off as a result of sickness, they are allowed add them to their holidays at the end of the year.

Maybe the introduction of something like this would help. First of all, it removes the expectation of unlimited paid sick days and secondly provides an incentive not to use them to recover from hangovers, etc, etc.

Thats a cool idea.

One drawback with sick day/holiday incentive is that it may make someone who is sick (but desperate for holidays) come into work and infect other staff causing a bigger problem.

One drawback for not having sick pay is that sick people will come to work if at all able and can similarly, to above, infect other staff/customers.

There's lots of research on the subject some along the lines of "Presenteeism"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presenteeism

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/26/health/26cons.html?ex=1182484800&en=cc1d62a1c9e7eade&ei=5070

Thats true. It happens (to a lesser degree) even when there is paid sick leave. Theres always some http://www.google.ie/search?hl=en&c...ell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q=martyr+&spell=1martyr who drags themselves in. They tend not to suffer in silence either.

I seen it operated very successfully bonus given for no sick days taken, or maybe only one taken during a year. On the assumption that everyone takes then, then it would be like buying back time from the employees.

First of all flag it up with them and ask them why are they sick every Friday and Monday. Talk to them and see why they call in sick all the time. Maybe its something that cant be seen (family probs, etc etc)