Pulling sickies

We all know friends or colleagues who have exaggerated cold and flu symptoms to get a day off work. But it appears when it comes to pulling off a convincingly believable sickie; women have been found to be far more convincing than men.

A survey carried out by Kaloba Syrup of 10,000 adults, found that one in 10 have been discovered pulling a sickie – either by bumping into a fellow worker out and about or by posting comments and pictures on social media websites. The findings showed that men are twice as likely to be caught out than women.

Further research has revealed that almost 60% of Brits have pulled a sickie from work in the past three years despite not being ill.

The survey of 1,000 British employees, carried out by leading workforce management solutions developer, timeware (UK), found that despite the number of employees falsely claiming to be sick in the past three years, almost 90% of those surveyed did not consider absenteeism to be a problem in their workplace.   

As part of the research which set out to investigate absenteeism and productivity in the UK workplace, employees were asked what the reasons were for their unplanned absences in 2014:

?      Sickness (45%)

?      Childcare issues (20%)

?      Relationship issues (17%)

?      Had an interview (11%)

?      Personal problems (8%)

?      To avoid a difficult situation at work (8%)

The survey also found that employees are more likely to be absent from work with a hangover (7%) than because they are dissatisfied with their job (3%) or because they had to sort out a family issue (5%).

As well as looking into unplanned absence, the research also asked employees the main reasons why they were late for work in 2014. It found that:

?      Transport issues (43%)

?      Overslept (22%)

?      Lack of motivation (13%)

?      Family issues (18%)

?      Childcare issues (13%)

?      Didn?t like their boss (4%)

The results also showed that at present, employees hugely underestimate the problem that absenteeism poses. Despite statistics by ACAS highlighting that absenteeism is costing the economy an average of ?17million a year, the timeware report found that only 28% of people surveyed considered absenteeism to be a problem in their workplace.

Simon Birchall, managing director of timeware, said: ?These figures really illustrate that more work needs to be done to understand why some people do not feel they are able to disclose the real reasons for their absences – so that employers can better support their employees and to try to reduce avoidable absenteeism in the future.?