If you have ever run a business and employed people, you won't need me to tell you about the challenges one faces when dealing with sick leave.
We all fall sick from time to time - although as a boss you'll know that bosses seldom have the same benefits to fall back on as the people they employ and often have to work through when they should be tucked up in bed recuperating.
Imagine this hypothetical scene: it's Friday morning in the summer. The sun is out and there's not a cloud in the sky.
On opening your office door in readiness for another busy day, you note the answer-phone light blinking. You listen to the stored messages and your worst fear is confirmed: one of your staff has left a message explaining that they aren't well and won't be coming to work.
Sometimes bosses don't immediately think: poor you, I hope you are feeling better soon. No, certain people come with certain traits and it becomes almost predictable that when fine weather arrives there will be a degree of absenteeism from that person.
It is an occupational hazard I guess but it really does rankle when one person can let a team down, often forcing others to cover their work when they are already hard pressed to do their own. It's not only unfair on the boss but it's also extremely unfair to hard working and conscientious colleagues.
On occasions one instinctively knows when one is being taken for a mug but there's often very little one can do unless the person throwing the illicit sickie is caught out.
Beware: there's always an audit trail
Prior to the internet, all we could rely on for communication was the good old telephone. However with today's array of social media tools and instant communication it is possible to keep tabs on someone's movements even if they are not consciously transmitting their location.
An innocent tweet from the beach or being tagged in a friend's Facebook album can easily catch someone out, confirming that they were not really doing what they said they were doing or where they said they were.
That is why I am very interested in a case for unfair dismissal currently being fought in New Zealand.
Management Issues report: In March, Air New Zealand fired a flight attendant, Gina Kensington, following a dispute over her taking two days sick leave to look after her sister.In a bid to be reinstated she took her case to the Employment Relations Authority. But the airline responded by asking to see copies of her Facebook pages and bank records for the disputed two days to verify – or disprove - her story.
Without casting any kind of judgement or pre-empting the enquiry's findings - putting any privacy issues and the morality of seeking to obtain information from someone's Facebook account - if Gina Kensington's social media audit trail does expose here as being somewhere or doing something that doesn't involve caring for her sick sister then there will be serious questions to answer.
As an ex-employer I do feel that bosses (and other employees) need protection from employees who abuse the system. After all, lying in order to procure a day of pay is fraud, it's as simple as that.
It is no different from the recent (and snowballing, it seems) cases of benefit fraud.
Where do you stand on this?
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