Hope for Cure for Serial Sickie

Good Day,

Herewith our latest article on those who continuously take sick leave.

A caring catch-up chat may be all that is needed to cure the "serial sickie" and improve work attendance on a Monday and a Friday, an absenteeism monitoring company recommends.

"A good place to start would be to institute a return to work policy whereby employees are always interviewed by their managers on returning to work," said CAM solutions, which produce software that tracks sick leave. "This makes employees uncomfortable if they have been fraudulently ill, and it makes them feel cared for if they have genuinely been sick." Managers can't assume an employee has been lying about being ill, but the meeting leaves the abusers feeling embarrassed, an effective way of stopping the abuse, they advise.

A study of sick leave information from more than 60 companies in South Africa with over 150,000 employees showed that Monday and Friday are the favourite days for sickies. Flu, gastro and lower back pain are the serial sickies' ailments of choice, statistics show. "These illnesses are relatively easy to fake and so lend themselves
to employees as good reasons to take a day off. The illnesses have quick recovery times, making it more likely that a person who took the false sick leave could show up the next day looking fine, without raising too many suspicions," said CAM'spattern If CEO Johnny Johnson.

Doctors can also be fooled when a patient says they have a headache, or describe the same flu virus symptoms as everyone else. "A lot of employees feel they are owed the sick leave and if they don't use it, they lose it. But it is really only there to cover an employee if they do get sick, so that they don't lose their jobs, and abusing it is paramount to fraud," said Johnson.

The company also recommends rewarding managers whose team is rarely off sick and who are all happy and productive.

Study exposes opportunists in the workplace – they use the same excuses, in the same pattern

If an employee gets sick for just one day, on a Monday or Friday, and sites flu or gastro as the reason, bosses might just be justified in feeling suspicious. Recent information provided by CAM Solutions, a specialist absenteeism software company, shows that employees abusing sick absenteeism tend to use the same excuses and follow the same patterns in terms of the day they choose to be absent - all around the country. The information is based on sick leave information from more than 60 South African companies with over 150 000 employees.

According to statistics generated by CAMS software ABSOLV, most employees abusing the system chose to do so on a Monday or a Friday and they only took one day’s sick leave per incident. When it came to the reasons for being sick on these one-day absences, 2.23% of employees in the sample said they had influenza, followed by gastroenteritis for 1.49% of the 150 000 strong sample, and 1.47%of the sample said they had lower back pain for a day.

“We call these one-day sick days – taken on either a Monday or a Friday - opportunistic, because they mostly, but not always, occur when employees are looking for an opportunity to take the day off without taking annual leave,” says CAMS CEO Johnny Johnson.

“These illnesses are relatively easy to fake and so lend themselves to employees as good reasons to take a day off. The illnesses have quick recovery times, making it more likely that a person who took the false sick leave could show up the next day looking fine, without raising too many suspicions,” says Johnny Johnson.

Johnson says it’s generally easier to fake a cold than to walk around pretending you had pneumonia, for example. And if a doctor’s certificate is required, doctors generally can’t argue with someone who says they have the same flu virus every one else has. A bad headache or an upset stomach is not something that is easy to detect without relying on what a patient tells them.

“A lot of employees feel they are owed the sick leave and if they don’t use it, they lose it. But it is really only there to cover an employee if they do get sick, so that they don’t lose their jobs, and abusing it is paramount to fraud.

“Companies looking to manage rife sick absenteeism abuse can be guided by wellness management companies. A good place to start would be to institute a return to work policy whereby employees are always interviewed by their managers on returning to work. This makes employees uncomfortable if they have been fraudulently ill, and it makes them feel cared for if they have genuinely been sick. Managers can’t assume an employee has been lying about being ill, but this return to work meeting generally makes the abusers very embarrassed and it’s very effective in stopping the abuse.”

Johnson says another strategy is to reward managers who have a team of employees that is rarely off sick and who are all happy and productive.

“It’s easy to pick up the serial sick leave abusers using our software, because they take one day sick leave around the weekend, every few weeks and this is detected by our unique indices and report.

“These serial abusers are costing the economy R 1 billion a year, and they are holding jobs that could go to more worthy, willing candidates in a difficult economic climate,” Johnson adds.

CAM Solutions deals mostly with sick absenteeism and other forms of unplanned absenteeism (AWOL, Family Responsibility Leave etc) that is measured and reported on through our ABSOLVTM software. This software produces a report called the Absenteeism Management Report (or AMRTM for short). A sample of this report can be viewed on our website and this will give you a good idea on what type of information you will be able to receive for your company.


Should you be interested in using this software, kindly log onto http://www.absolv.co.za for more information.



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Yours faithfully,


Michelle Bennett

EXECUTIVE PA


CAM Solutions

Providing Software Solutions in Health and Absenteeism Management

Tel: 041-368 6742

Fax: 086-524 1819


View our Absenteeism Blogs:

http://camsolutions.blogspot.com/ or http://www.absenteeism.iblog.co.za/


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