Most staff don’t like colleagues who pull sickies

Two-thirds of employees are fed up with fellow workers pulling ‘sickies’ when they are not really ill, a Ceridian survey showed.

The HR services provider’s report found that two-thirds of employees either strongly disapproved of or did not think it fair that fellow workers took sickies.

Ceridian’s survey of 1,050 employees also revealed that they took an average of 8.5 days off in the past year, and 64% of employers trusted the reasons they gave for their absence enough not to require a sicknote for absences of less than five days and did not record details of the reported illness. 

Doug Sawers, managing director of Ceridian in the UK, said the generally low tolerance of fellow employees taking sickies provided an opportunity for employers to police absences.

He said: “According to the CBI, absence due to ill health is costing British business £13bn per year. 

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“When it comes to genuine reasons for absence, the average number of days off per year is driven up by a relatively small number of employees taking many days off. 

“If employers concentrated on helping these employees to reduce the numbers of days absent from work then they could significantly improve overall organisational performance, both financially and in terms of customer service.”