SOMETIMES it is the comedians who get you quickest to the heart of a story. On the Radio 4
News Quiz programme, Linda Smith, musing on the story about Tesco getting tough on sick pay, shook her head in horror, not at the malingerers but at the idea of going to work at all.
“It’s horrible. You have to throw sickies, and ring up in that special throwing-a-sickie voice, then go swimming to cheer yourself up.” This was followed by a demonstration of that wonderfully unconvincing hoarse, faint voice with which all office and shop managers are all too familiar. “I just don’t . . . aaaah . . . feel at all good . . . cough, cough”.
That’s it, really. In the run-up to the temptations of Euro 2004, a Confederation of British Industry survey reveals that more than three quarters of companies suspect that their staff are feigning illness, particularly on Fridays and Mondays. The total cost of dubious absences is estimated at 25 million days, or £1.75 billion. Nationwide, each worker takes on average more than seven casual sick days; if you consider the heroes who invariably come in and cough noisily over their co-workers, that suggests that the persistently poorly are scoring impressive personal totals.
No doubt some of them are just unlucky: but colds, migraines, food poisoning, bad backs and stress are useful cover for hangovers, disaffection, football matches, shopping, achy-breaky hearts and minor family crises. People do throw deliberate sickies — even the shopworkers’ union Usdaw admits it — impeding the smooth running of workplaces and imposing on colleagues.
I can see why Tesco and its imitators are piloting a hard line in which the first three sick days of each session are unpaid. They add that staff who never go sick will get three extra days’ holiday (though God knows how many sneezing, feverish checkout assistants that incentive will bring us in the flu season). The company claims that it is only the last-minute sickie it is targeting: if people need a day off for good reasons, it “bends over backwards ” to accommodate them.
There could, of course, be an unintended effect (apart from the toxic snifflers determined to win their three days’ extra holiday). Some conscientious workers, freed from the sense of guilt attaching to paid sick leave, will take duvet-days as even more of a right than before. “They’re not paying me — I can stay away. It’s my life.” This could turn into de facto flexi-working. But the hard line is worth a try, in Tesco’s view. And, like the CBI survey, it throws the problem into the limelight where we can all try to work out why it happens.
Why do we take so many dubious sick days? Some causes are obvious. Unions cite the fact that we have the longest working hours in Europe (old Europe, that is; I suspect that New Europe, with lower wages and sterner aspirations, works all hours given the chance). Another likely reason is that British workplaces contain a uniquely high number of mothers, often of very young children (more than half of mothers of under-twos are doing paid work).
It is a mistake to assume that all false sick days involve hangovers or football: a woman (or male single parent) whose baby is teething or fretfully unwilling to be left at the nursery may not be able to say so to an unsympathetic employer, and is therefore forced to do the croaking telephone voice. I bet that even today, in some macho companies parents would rather feign sickness than admit that they put their baby first. When Tesco says that it will be helpful “if someone needs to take their child to the dentist” it seems to assume, wrongly, that all childcare crises happen by appointment. Most of them don’t.
Other clear reasons are buried in the CBI report, and not hard to dig out. There has been a particularly steep increase in absenteeism — by 8 per cent — in the service sector, which is ascribed to the fact that many companies have made redundancies lately, throwing extra pressure on smaller staffs. But even so, manufacturing companies continue to suffer more than service companies.
Presumably the thought of anxious, visible clients is harder to bear than the thought of unfitted widgets incommoding more distant customers. Also, larger organisations report higher absence rates: a company employing more than 5,000 workers suffers double the absenteeism of a company with 50. It is not difficult to work out why. When there are only 50 of you, everyone feels the importance of his role and it is apparent that if you’re sick, your work must be done by someone else — probably a person you know quite well. Most people, valuing good relationships with their colleagues, will think twice before dropping them in it merely for a hangover or a sulk.
Also, smaller companies tend to get on better with their employees on a personal level. They have to. And, to be cynical, the smaller a team is the more likely it is that a manager will spot the difference between a genuinely unwell person and a faker.
Equally interesting is the survey’s result showing that public sector workers take 25 per cent more time off work than those in private companies. At first glance this is a mystery: surely the public sector should inspire dedication to serving the general good? You would expect the private sector, with its overpaid, arrogant fat-cat bosses, to provoke most vengeful sickies. If you opened the paper and saw that your chief executive had just got an obscenely huge bonus when you had been pegged below inflation for years, you might well be tempted to award yourself a long morning in bed.
But no: it seems that this is an old-fashioned leftie view. Private sector workers now actually show more responsibility than those in the public sector. Again, two factors probably apply: the size of the organisation — public sector employers being huge — and the degree of stress caused by their culture. It is not difficult to draw a line between the obsession with “targets” and “watchdogs” in the public sector and an increase in disaffection among the poor bloody infantry who have to deliver frequently illogical or impossible results.
Another distinction brought out in the CBI report is that manual workers take more time off than non-manual ones. Again, not much surprise there: manual workers tend to be lower paid and — crucially — less respected. And traditionally in Britain they are less proudly identified (by themselves and by managers) with the company’s success. It is all summed up by Dudley Lusted of the insurance company AXA, co-author of the report, who observed: “Short-term absence responds well to good people-management, as the causes often have a lot to do with employees’ attitudes towards work.”
Of course they do: and the solutions lie ready. If you make your staff miserable, insult them, undervalue them and treat them as ciphers, they’ll go sick on purpose to spite you. If you overwork them and load them with daft rules and paperwork because you are trying to hit stupid targets, they’ll go sick because you’ve actually made them sick. On the other hand, if you organise them in small, focused, intimate teams and encourage human friendship in the very design and facilities of your building, they will be less likely to betray one another and you.
If you are openly understanding of parental problems, especially with very young children, then they will be open with you and not feign illness: indeed as often as not they might just take the first couple of hours of the day off while they sort out the problem, and get back on the checkout or the reception desk by lunchtime because they believe in the company and like it.
We all like to think well of ourselves, as achievers and grafters and reliable creatures. And that’s the key to it all. You work well and consistently if you believe you are useful, can see the connection between the company’s profits and your own wellbeing, and are not constantly insulted by the senior management giving itself huge pay rises.
These things should be truisms, golden rules at the core of every management course. If you look around you, or listen to any group of young workers in any pub or wine bar at six o’clock, you will find that they are not.
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