Off sick, calls from manager

dowie said:
How does it help to do that? Like unless someone is fully taking the Micky and actually at some music festival/all day rave with music blaring in the background etc.. then phoning up to call in sick doesn’t give much additional information. If you’ve got food poisoning or flu etc.. then a manager who isn’t medically qualified isn’t diagnosing it on the phone, in fact it opens it up to nonsense like “oh you don’t sound ill” etc... or even asking for details is a potential can of worms - like say a female employee has some private issue she’d rather not discuss with a male manager. This is the sort of policy that doesn’t really have a tangible benefit and opens up the potential for the sort of nonsesnse the OP had to deal with and/or potentially worse. That it’s common or standard in some places doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a good policy.
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All I can say is that I've seen the data behind my organisation and the introduction of the rule and it absolutely has benefited, particularly single day absences on a Monday.
 
dowie said:
How does it help to do that? Like unless someone is fully taking the Micky and actually at some music festival/all day rave with music blaring in the background etc.. then phoning up to call in sick doesn’t give much additional information. If you’ve got food poisoning or flu etc.. then a manager who isn’t medically qualified isn’t diagnosing it on the phone, in fact it opens it up to nonsense like “oh you don’t sound ill” etc... or even asking for details is a potential can of worms - like say a female employee has some private issue she’d rather not discuss with a male manager. This is the sort of policy that doesn’t really have a tangible benefit and opens up the potential for the sort of nonsesnse the OP had to deal with and/or potentially worse. That it’s common or standard in some places doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a good policy.
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People find it harder to lie when they've actually got to speak to someone.
 
Is this actually based on any real studies? It's dubious to make claims based on a glance at some data and would be dubious to assume some perceived effect applies in general. The potential pitfalls are still there... also suppose there is a noticeable effect, in addition to the pitfalls already mentioned, what if some of the data you're seeing isn't skivers but also people coming in sick because they feel they shouldn't call in sick... they then infect others if they have flu say?

Some other good reasons not to make a big deal of this:

https://www.breathehr.com/blog/6-reasons-not-to-contact-an-employee-whilst-theyre-off-sick
 
dowie said:
Is this actually based on any real studies? It's dubious to make claims based on a glance at some data and would be dubious to assume some perceived effect applies in general. The potential pitfalls are still there... also suppose there is a noticeable effect, in addition to the pitfalls already mentioned, what if some of the data you're seeing isn't skivers but also people coming in sick because they feel they shouldn't call in sick... they then infect others if they have flu say?

Some other good reasons not to make a big deal of this:

https://www.breathehr.com/blog/6-reasons-not-to-contact-an-employee-whilst-theyre-off-sick
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Like I say, the policy has had a noticeable effect on single day absences by a limited subset of employees without any increased absences elsewhere.

I don't doubt the policy is pointless for the majority of the working population, but that isn't the point of such a policy. As the poster above says, it's harder to lie when you have to speak with someone.
 
I did see what you said already, I asked an open question about studies as I'm interested? Vague claims/anecdotes about an apparent observed effect in some organisation of unspecified size isn't particularly informative. Not to mention the already noted pitfalls/drawbacks.
 
Look at it the other way: if you didn't answer and lived alone, he would send the police around to make sure you were okay.
 
Phonecall by X o'clock on the day is common across many organisation, although I'm happy to accept comms from my team via other means. What I don't like is not being notified of sickness by mid-morning as I then have to go around trying to figure out where they are (which can be a worry if they are someone with mental health issues etc).

To answer the question, no, I don't think I've ever been made to feel the same way. The closest thing I've had is a few comments from a manager (not my line manager) at a previous employer when I decided to work from home due to treacherous travel conditions, having on a previous occasion slipped on ice and sprained my wrist when attempting to get into the office.
 
As many have said, phone call in the morning is pretty standard. Mine used to be a call within an hour of your start time but now my team is so small that a message to my boss is usually enough for short term illness. Last time I was off he was as well with the same thing so that was easy LOL.
 
To put some closure on this. Ive called daily so far and also had calls from h+s after going thru official procedure as sickness is relating to work

so just gotta take it easy now and get better!
 
I like to make these calls awkward for the manager, not that i've actually been off in 4 years. But when I used to work in a call centre many years ago they always asked whats wrong so I used go into great detail on the number of times i've been up in the night excreting something that resembles wallpaper paste mixed with muddy water and smells like the sulphur smell you get when you blow out a match. Or explain that you think it was last nights meal that's giving you the stabbing pains in your stomach as your excrement smells like raw meat & garlic so you think it might be food poisoning.
 
Normally you need to know your company policy - ours is a mandatory phone call now . Text are unacceptable.

We changed our policy when people were just texting , funny how all the sickness rates have dropped off . These were the usual Monday Flu merchants and Friday tummy bug retards.

If your sick your sick and he should not be calling you to guilt trip you under any circumstances.
 
I have to phone up 2 hours before my shift starts. Interesting as I start work at 3am and nobody ever picks up the phone.
Meh, I tried.
 
Ayahuasca said:
Anecdotal, but my place saw similar results to what @Pudney said above. No more chancers who were on a Sunday bender emailing in sick for Monday.
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FYI when I worked for HP, HR implemented a similar policy and I as a union rep worked with them on the 12 months of stats following the policy. We also saw a similar effect to that observed by Pudney. However, we saw a 21% increase in incidence of stress related sickness, so in the end HR rescinded the policy, as overall sickness absence rose, especially long term sickness. They consequently introduced "duvet" days where you could just send a text to say you weren't coming in and it was subtracted from annual leave or flexi - no conditions were applied and you didn't need to give a reason. Single day absences dropped by over 15% and overall sickness rates by 8%.

Sometimes, people just need the day off.
 
mrbell1984 said:
Never ever heard of this before. Every company should have this IMO. Problem is that might cause major problems for smaller companies where only that one person does that job role.
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Yes, it does work better for organisations of a certain size and a degree of responsibility overlap. As for coping with the effects, it's no different than if a member of staff is sick or injured - however, if your business is at least SME sized and you can't cope with a single person being absent at short notice then you have resourcing issues and the business isn't being managed correctly.
 
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