If, as the party season stutters into life, you should find yourself feeling a trifle too hungover to go into work one morning, then please do not follow the example of Kyle Doyle of Sydney, Australia.

Doyle achieved global fame recently when it was reported that he had decided he needed a duvet day, so phoned his office to say he was taking the day off for “medical reasons”. His deception complete, he apparently decided to make the following entry on Facebook: “Kyle Doyle is not going to work, stuff it, I'm still trashed. SICKIE WOO!”. Which, according to the reports, his boss then read.

Although it transpired that the story was, in all likelihood, an internet fake, it struck a chord with all those who regard “throwing a sickie” as a leisure day gained rather than a working day lost. A lot of people apparently fall into this category: a recent survey found that one third of American workers have called in sick with fake excuses at least once this year. Some had errands to run or family commitments but, for the majority, it was just an opportunity to lie in, kick back, recharge the batteries and, when the excitement of cheating the system finally subsided, run a vacuum cleaner around the living room.

In fact, the excuses employed by such miscreants are often more imaginative than what they do with their recouped time. These range from citing practical difficulties (one employee told his boss he didn't want to come in because he feared losing the parking space at the front of his house, another that his wife had burnt all his clothes) to emotional issues (“My dog is stressed out after a family reunion”). And, of course, there are the medical complaints. One man said he had contracted glandular fever after kissing someone at the office party (he asked his boss to notify all the other women he kissed that night). That sounded relatively plausible compared with the person who claimed that he'd had a heart attack in the morning but was “all better now”.

There is a temptation to treat sickies lightly but the Confederation of Business Industry estimates that the 21 million days lost to absence in the UK last year that were sickies cost the economy £1.6 billion. Susan Anderson, its director of human resources policy, said higher rates of absence in the public sector - an average of nine days off sick each year, compared with four in the tourism industry - showed how “low morale, poor management and a culture of absence” exacer- bated the problem.

Employers are using increasingly sophisticated measures to fight back against the sickie. The most effective, according to Ben Willmott, employee relations adviser at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, is the “return to work” interview. This involves discussing an employee's absence with him or her, asking if it was related to earlier absences and generally letting the employee know that he or she has been missed. “It's a marker to say that absence is taken seriously,” says Willmott.

The Royal Mail, meanwhile, has a policy of referring problems to its occupational health unit after one week of the illness. Work-related illnesses are treated early and at the company's expense but those who are swinging the lead face being found out.

The company has managed to reduce its absenteeism by 25 per cent in just three years. Dr Steve Boorman, chief medical adviser at Royal Mail - one day off in 18 years, and that was for surgery - said, in addition to offering assessment and treatment to the staff, the Royal Mail had opened its own in-house clinics and fitness centres, and was running health promotion campaigns on smoking and back pain. It had also invested in extra training for managers on handling absence.

He says managing short-term absences is often about making people see the harm they do to the business. “We also started a prize draw for full attendance. It enabled us to get a lot of stuff to our employees about the actual cost of taking sickies, and to make managers understand the true cost of absence.”

Boorman says that the company has also tracked patterns of absence. “That means a manager can say to someone, 'Look, you've been off every Monday for a month.' That way you can look at issues such as drinking, religious holidays, problems with kids, football matches, race meetings. Even market days can have an impact. People want to get their cheap shopping.”

He says positive initiatives, such as a helpline on which employees can get impartial advice on problems, show the employees that they are valued and have as much impact as authoritarian measures.

In Australia - spiritual home of the sickie - a “health management service” has reduced short-term absence by 45 per cent in clients such as Canon.

When employees are sick, instead of calling their manager they phone a call centre, staffed by nurses. These angels evaluate the caller's illness, offer advice and can recommend a return to work meeting or even pass the call on to a psychologist in cases of stress or mental illness. The system, run by Direct Health Solutions, discourages sickies but also offers help to employees. One man was told to go straight to hospital after he described the symptoms of a heart attack.

It's not just employers, however, that are adopting innovative new measures to deal with sickies. Internet sites such as www.pullasickie.com give advice on how to make your illness sound convincing when you phone in to work - from preparing the ground the day before by complaining about feeling “all achy” to lying on your bed with your head hanging off the side when you call work, in order to sound more bunged up. Perhaps the cleverest site is http://whoissick.org/sickness/, which allows the determined skiver to pinpoint the illness most prevalent in his or her geographical location using Google Maps. Its information for the UK is currently sparse but the site owners hope that it will quickly take off over here.

Should we, though, begrudge good employees the odd day off? Mark Millard, an occupational psychologist, thinks not. “If the manager is satisfied with the employee's work and doesn't think there are any underlying issues then they can accept the very occasional sickie,” he says. “It's a matter of looking at overall performance and value to the firm rather than clamping down on people.” And, he says, never forget that a 100 per cent attendance record can also reveal that not everything is right with someone.

“Work is a great comfort in many people's lives as it keeps them out of the house.”