How Businesses Are Trying To Cut Down On Rising Sick
How Businesses Are Trying To Cut Down On Rising Sick Days

The idea of "chucking a sickie" is something that many Aussie workers seem incredibly comfortable doing. Many phone in to work with claims of being too sick to come in, while others are genuinely unwell. When you zoom back and look at the national average, most employees took around 14 sick days in the last year, a staggering 23% increase over the last five years alone. What's more, this habit ends up costing businesses $7.3 billion a year due to lost work - according to a 9News report, at least.

It creates a situation where businesses need to cut down on the ever-rising sick days, but what's being done to solve this problem? Unfortunately, companies need to work on two fronts to take care of the issue:

  • ● Prevent employees from getting sick at work
  • ● Remove the need for employees to "chuck a sickie" and fake being ill

When you look at the latest trends throughout the modern workplace, you'll find a few ideas floating around.

Invest In Cleanliness

A lot of businesses now realise that a clean workplace yields serious productivity benefits. When a lot of people share the same space day after day, all manner of germs will generate and sit on surfaces. While most airborne viruses - like the cold and flu - don't tend to live that long when on surfaces, the problem stems from how frequently people are in the office. You leave at 5pm and return the next day just before 9am, which doesn't give the germs enough time to perish.

As a result, people get sick because someone passes it around at work, but this can be solved with a commercial cleaning company. Businesses are hiring cleaning companies to cleanse their offices at the end of each day, removing germs and reducing the chances of people passing things to one another.

Furthermore, a lot of businesses invest in better ventilation systems to help recycle the air inside their office and prevent all of these viruses from floating around. You end up with offices that are always clean when you start the day, and always have fresh air circulating around. Both help to reduce the spread of germs in the workplace, which cuts down on genuine sick days.

Improve General Health & Safety Practices

Some employees will take sick days because they have a physical issue, not an illness. Unfortunately, this can happen as a direct result of where they work:

  • ● Employees trip or slip over and injure themselves
  • ● Poor desk setups and chairs create chronic back/neck pain
  • ● An individual burns themselves in the office kitchen space

All manner of things can go wrong when a company doesn't have the correct health & safety practices in place. Businesses are beginning to realise how important this is, and so they aim to improve general health & safety in the workplace. It's all about reducing the chances for accidents of any kind to happen, but it's also about creating "healthier" work environments for employees.

To touch on that final point, you see businesses invest in more ergonomic workstations for their employees to achieve better comfort and lower the chances of things like back or neck pain. Aside from creating a workplace that's less likely to cause injuries or accidents that result in sick days, improving health & safety practices can stop a business from dealing with endless employee lawsuits.

Encourage Flexible Working Patterns

Organisations utilise the first two ideas in a bid to cut down on genuine sick days by keeping employees healthy and free from injuries. With that in mind, the idea to encourage flexible working patterns sort of does the same thing while also tackling the "chuck a sickie" generation.

Employees are more likely to take time off work and fake being sick when they feel burnt out, or the prospect of going into work seems like too much of a chore. It's partly why the unemployment rate continues to rise, but companies are beginning to address this by encouraging more flexible working patterns.

Instead of working a full five-day week in the office with a strict 9-5, many businesses now let their employees work from home. This can be a permanent solution in some cases, but in others, there's a nice split between working in the office and then working from home. The common approach is to let people work from home on Friday so the week "feels" shorter - and some businesses even allow their employees to work from home on Monday.

You end up in a situation where employees get more flexibility, which improves their mental health and reduces burnout. As such, you cut down on the number of sick days someone might take for their mental health. At the same time, you're less likely to see people "chuck a sickie" when they have workplace flexibility. The prospect of going to work feels easier to deal with when you can work from home on a Monday or Friday.

Offer Generous Paid Leave

The elephant in the room is that many employees take sick days or fake being ill because they don't get enough paid time off from their employers. Someone is infinitely more likely to pretend to be sick so they can have a few extra days off a year if they only get the bare minimum in PTO.

So, while it may seem counterproductive, businesses can genuinely save money and cut down on sick days by offering generous paid leave benefits to employees. If you give your workers enough time off each year, they aren't going to "chuck a sickie" every couple of months. This is especially true if you're flexible with your paid leave system and people don't have to book time off months in advance.

There's no denying that we're dealing with a sick day problem in the workforce, but there are simple solutions to address this. Businesses need to be more generous with paid leave, for one, but they should also implement flexible working schedules, improve office health & safety, and create a cleaner work environment that less likely to make people sick. This enables you to tackle both of the problems at hand: people keep getting sick, and people keep faking sickness.