Anyone who has ever ran a business will not need me to tell them how infuriating a bout of spontaneous sickness can be.
I'm sure you know the kind of sickness I mean, it usually occurs either on a Friday, or Monday morning, with it reaching epidemic proportions during spells of fine weather.
The throwing of a sickie (sounds innocuous doesn't it) costs UK businesses millions of pounds each year and it's felt especially hard within small enterprises that don't have enough resources to cover absenteeism.
I can recount numerous occasions when I was done-over by unscrupulous employees. It happened so many times, this page isn't long enough to print them all...and you'd probably lose the will to live.
As a boss you get to know the patterns and when spontaneous absenteeism was going to occur and who was going to do it. Bosses are also often powerless to do anything about it unless the person in question got caught out: even then you were often over a barrel, and they knew it.
A recent survey found that six in 10 bosses in the UK did not believe employees when they called in sick.
I think we need to watch carefully the proposed change in legislation in Belgium.
The Independent reports, the Belgium government has proposed a law which would require employees taking a sick day to stay at home for a medical check-up.
The draft legislation would mean employees remaining at home for a four hour period during the working day for a doctor to visit to confirm that the person is really ill.
Any person, who called in sick and was found not to be at home could lose their pay for that day.
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