Poll: How much do you think sick pay should be?

How much do you think sick pay should be?

  • No pay

    Votes: 12 5.9%
  • Statutory sick pay

    Votes: 16 7.8%
  • Half pay

    Votes: 27 13.2%
  • Full pay

    Votes: 139 67.8%
  • Other (specify)

    Votes: 11 5.4%

  • Total voters
    205
Joined
10 May 2004
Posts
12,831
Location
Sunny Stafford
This thread is off the back of the Beeb running a story today about employees who feign sick and thus take sick leave more often than they should do.

Can we have a poll please Dons? :)

1. No pay
2. Statutory sick pay
3. Half pay
4. Full pay

I've worked in places where it's been no pay, half and full. Casual jobs / 6th form etc was zero pay and we just covered each other and swapped shifts.

Personally, I think that half pay works the best. Place I used to work for, private sector computer company. What you had left were those who took the average 3-5 days off per year for D&V and flu etc. For hospital appointments, full pay was still given as long as you showed your appointment letter. For GP appointments you just worked your time back.

Another good idea I think is the company that my friend works for, customer services, again private sector. Sick is full pay, but any absences over a certain trigger point per year and you lose your annual bonus. I think that's a good incentive because again it just leaves you with the people who take 3-5 days off. Anything more serious like an operation or a bad injury, would be manager's discretion as long as you showed your papers and it wouldn't count towards the trigger point.

Then there is public sector (NHS and the MOD) where you get full pay for 6 months. One of my colleagues goes off for stress virtually every year, sometimes twice. It's always 4 weeks off, then 4 weeks phased return. Plus, she only works 3 days a week to begin with and gets 41 days annual leave pro-rata! Meanwhile, there are 3 full-timers with the same job spec and they manage fine. In another department, someone played the stress card again, took 6 months on full pay. Shortly after it switched to half pay, she returns. Bleeding obvious! It always seemed to be the stress card yet we worked in fairly cushy admin jobs.

What are your thoughts and what are your usual sick pay arrangements?

My current arrangement: I'm still public sector, but we have a good track record now. Me + 2 colleagues have the same role. One of them had 4 days off in the past year, so not too bad. Then me and the other one had zero in the past year, but we've both had a cold at some point and we were allowed to just work from home. This helped us to get better quicker and not pass germs around. At the same time, we still put in the hours and doesn't get counted as an absence. It also means less paperwork and manager's time not being wasted with back-to-work interviews etc.
 
Soldato
OP
Joined
10 May 2004
Posts
12,831
Location
Sunny Stafford
Quite a range of answers there guys :)

Post #6 about using holiday pay does sound a little bit harsh but I guess it depends on how many holiday days you get off per year. If you only get the statutory minimum (20 days + 8 bank holidays) and you had to take 4 of them off as sick, then that's quite a big chunk out of the 20 days. Kinda equally as bad was a private sector firm I used to work for gave us the minimum 20 days, but we also had Christmas shutdown which automatically knocked off 5 days. This meant that we could only take 3 full weeks off for the rest of the year.
 
Back
Top Bottom