How-to on workplace hooky: Easy does it with the hooey
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It's almost summer. Call in sick.
A new survey on "summer absenteeism" shows 39 percent of full-time employees have called in sick just to enjoy a lazy summer day.
The online survey, conducted in April by Harris Interactive and workforce management consultant Kronos Inc., calls it "seasonal-absence syndrome."
Most of the 1,077 workers surveyed, however, call it taking a "mental-health day."
The job, the boss, co-workers, customers, or something, drove them crazy. So they went on a shopping spree, hit the beach or relaxed at a spa. Some said they went rock climbing or sky diving.
Mondays and Fridays were "mental-health days" of choice, creating three-day weekends for anything but
I found a great manual - compiled by several site visitors - called, "How to call in sick when you just need a day off."
It recommends leaving the boss a voice message or e-mail, if possible, and if not, "get off the phone as quickly as possible."
"Cough a few times if necessary, or speak in a raspy voice," the guide says.
"Be sure not to overdo the sick sounds when you leave a message. Managers often forward the most ridiculous-sounding messages, and you can become quite infamous among the management team."
It's best to complain of symptoms, not illnesses. Talk about congestion, coughing, fever, stomach problems, back pain or severe headaches - none of which require medical intervention or proof.
"If your 'affliction' is embarrassing, your boss is more likely to want to hang up the phone. ... Diarrhea is the classic example of this," the guide says.
Another piece of advice: "Go to work when you're really sick, so your boss will not think you're faking when you decided to play sick to get out of working."
A whopping 98 percent of respondents in an earlier sick-day survey by Harris and Kronos reported going to work ill.
The most cited reasons were, "I feel guilty for calling in"; "my workload is too heavy"; and "I save my sick time for personal reasons."
Is it any wonder why some companies are getting sick of sick days?
On May 14, Merrill Lynch & Co. - employer to 60,300 people - sent out a memo telling employees they could only take three sick days a year. It had offered 40.
Anyone with four days can be docked pay. Nine days is cause for termination.
"A good attendance record and demonstrated reliability is one attribute of successful performance and is expected of all employees," the memo said.
Sick days cost U.S. employers more than $74 billion annually, according to research from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
A more recent survey by Hewitt Associates, a human resources services company based in Lincolnshire, Ill., put the cost between 1 percent and 3 percent of payroll. For a company with $450 million in payroll, sick time could cost between $4.5 million and $13.5 million a year, the Hewitt study said.
Hey, that's almost enough to pay a CEO for a whole year.
The average worker takes about 5.2 sick days a year, and the average U.S. company offers employees 8.1 sick days a year, according to a 2006 study by Mercer Human Resources Consulting.
Still, other tallies show that tens of millions of Americans do not have sick-pay benefits. According to the advocacy group ACORN, 48 percent of private-sector workers do not have paid sick days.
No federal law requires sick pay. But U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy recently drafted a bill called the Healthy Families Act that would require companies employing 15 or more people to pay for sick time.
A recent poll by Wall Street Journal Online and Harris Interactive showed that 80 percent of U.S. adults favor requiring some employers to provide paid sick time. How else are they supposed to enjoy the beach?
"Don't come back to work the next day with a suntan, pictures, stories, etc.," the
Related: How-to on workplace hooky: Easy does it with the hooey
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