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HR practiceSickness absence

Mary Poppins is just around the corner

by Personnel Today 31 Oct 2006
by Personnel Today 31 Oct 2006

Recent research showed that more than eight out of 10 staff (or 84%, if you’d rather) are ‘pulling sickies’. In reply, 74% of employers say they have had to discipline staff for poor attendance compared to 68% in 2004.


So what is the solution? Guru reckons it’s time to get back to basics. Think back to the halcyon days of your youth when, if you tried to pull a sickie, mama would have the solution. It would be a couple spoons of caster oil or some other loathsome concoction down the gullet. Maybe some kind of gargling product.


The point is that unless you were sick you wouldn’t make spurious claims lest the big teaspoon came out filled with the medicinal version of a mouthful of manure (ie, something you really don’t want to ingest).


So from henceforth every office should have a small medicine cabinet placed where everyone can see it, with a stern message saying that it will be dispensed to any staff claiming to be ill.


This way, you can also claim you have an occupational health department which should help recruitment of future employees. See? Everyone’s a winner.

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Personnel Today

Personnel Today articles are written by an expert team of award-winning journalists who have been covering HR and L&D for many years. Some of our content is attributed to "Personnel Today" for a number of reasons, including: when numerous authors are associated with writing or editing a piece; or when the author is unknown (particularly for older articles).

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