For vacation days, your point makes sense to me. For sick days, people don't get to choose when they get sick. Someone can just as easily get sick on day 1 or 2 of a job as on day 401 or 402.
I once talked to a manager about how he handed out raises. He mentioned one engineer who was sick exactly 10 days out of each year. Coincidentally, the company offered 10 days of paid sick leave a year.
He laughed, and said she wasn't fooling anyone, and didn't give her a raise.
So he decided he'd figured out her scam without ever bringing it up in yearly or monthly review. He also never asked for proof of the 10 days of sick leave after the first year, which is reasonable to do if he had a suspicion she was flouting a rule. If he wanted to factor sick days into his pay decision, he had a responsibility to make sure he was correct using the proper internal channels.
An alternate and equally plausible view is that she had a condition that rendered her borderline ill more than 10 days a year, but couldn't afford to take unpaid leave. So she just 'toughed it out' instead for the remaining days.
Laughing vindictively as you deny a raise to someone isn't something be lauded or emulated under any circumstance.
Personally, I think PTO subsuming sick leave ought to be illegal. I've seen multiple people with bright, red noses in the office unable to function much but won't go home because they can't afford to take the day off and they already have plans to take PTO two months out.
Why should I have to risk getting the flu because of this nonsense?
In Sweden at least, it ("PTO subsuming sick leave") is illegal. Vacation days (of which minimum is 25 for full time employees, but often 30 or more) are a completely separate thing from sick days. When you're sick, you're sick. The employer pays for the first 14 days (minus a deduction of a fifth of a average week's pay and 20% per day) and the state pays after that. Those 14 days are per incident, not per year, and being sick is not a valid reason for letting someone go. If you happen to be sick during your vacation, that too counts as sick days and not vacation days. All of this is by law.
I understand hating that from a health perspective, but for a profit-driven entity there's no resolving this issue without compromise. Sick time will always get abused by someone, so you might as well provide some incentive to not abuse it.
That's one possibility. But there's also the possibility that encouraging presenteeism (which is what incentivizing hoarding sick days is) results in a net loss of productivity as sick employees both half-ass their work and also get their coworkers sick.
My first programming job was for a defense contractor.
There was no PTO concept, just vacation (2 whole weeks a year) and sick leave (12 days a year). Unused sick leave accrued indefinitely but was not usable in any other way.
I was putting myself through University and still had about 2.5 years of work. I was taking 12-13 units at night year round. So, there were times when I'd use a sick day for study/project/etc time. But I was lead programmer on a critical system by then (including being on-call) and was my department's de facto liason to the computing center, so I got little friction about it.
Maybe they do, but in the US FFS re-imbursement regime, it's what they do.
That said - it is still ridiculous simply because the doctor can't do anything about whatever I might be most commonly sick for (migraine, flu, bad cold, bad seasonal allergy). I'll happily go to the doctor when I have a broken leg or a heart attack, but I'd prefer to stay home and sleep in a dark room and drink water when I have the flu...
Fair enough, I agree he was being passive aggressive, but on the other hand, if someone is doing something that has the appearance of impropriety, it's a good idea to proactively bring it up with the boss to head off the suspicions.
Have you ever been managed by a passive-aggressive person? I haven't personally, but I know many people who have been, and the stain they leave on a team lasts years.
Your implication here is that it the the subordinate's job to read the mind of management. She must know what is 'proper' in her manager's mind outside of the explicit rules of the job. Management, however, is allowed to read her state of mind incorrectly and adjust her pay accordingly.
Obviously power imbalances like this exist everywhere, and it's wise to be proactive and careful, but that doesn't mean we should hold up examples like these as just or reasonable outcomes.
What does "improper" mean and who gets to decide what actions are improper? Paid days are paid days and just because they have a certain name doesn't change a thing. Has anyone ever been accused of faking a vacation? Of course not, because that would be ridiculous. But since sick days are called sick days all of a sudden you need to prove you're bedridden or else face consequences? That's absurd. Treat your employees like adults.
Sick days and vacation days typically have different notification requirements- in most places that had them I've worked at, it was 2 weeks for vacation and asap for sick leave. Vacation time could be denied if, say, the job involved time sensitive equipment or safety related tasks (I.e. nursing) and others had already requested the time off.
Abusing sick leave- depending on the job- has very real consequences for your coworkers and company, if someone absolutely has to pick up your slack.
Confirmed. I'm a manager right now, and I get emailed to approve vacation days but I only have on-demand visibility into my team members' personal and sick days. Those last two types are auto-approved if the employee hasn't run out of them, since nobody gets to choose when they're necessary.
All three of these paid leave types are limited in number of days per year at my current employer, despite my preference as per another comment for paid sick days to be unlimited. I don't make those rules here.
However there are labour laws in force which protect the right to total (mostly unpaid) sick leave for 26 weeks out of every 12 months, including rights to return to the company afterward. (Special cases allow different totals, sometimes even two years for things like a minor child dying. And yes there are government-paid sickness benefits here in most long-lasting sick leaves.)
I agree that those kinds of statutory long durations are pretty different from the kind of sick leave I think should be unlimited, but having to care about 5 vs 10 vs 15 days total per year is not conducive to a healthy workplace, absent reason to suspect fraud.
Why is it abuse if I use my PTO? The whole point of PTO is that the company is agreeing to give you 10 days worth of slack. So obviously it shouldn't be a problem if you use that 10 days of slack. Are you telling me that the company is lying about the benefits it provides, and that it doesn't actually provide 10 days of sick leave? What else are they lying about?
> Are you telling me that the company is lying about the benefits it provides,
No, I'm telling you that there's a difference in requirements for taking sick leave versus vacation. The only reason that sick leave doesn't have the same requirement as vacation is you don't choose when you get sick. If you take a sick day as a vacation day, you're forcing others to scramble to make up for you not being there.
> Why is it abuse if I use my PTO?
Perhaps you missed my intended emphasis on certain jobs that have time or safety sensitive responsibilities, such as nursing. It may not hurt the company for you to take those 10 days, but it does hurt whoever gets called in to fill in for you when they otherwise would have had off.
Here's a simple, real-world example: A company that runs a group-care home for disabled adults is currently understaffed due to a number of circumstances (the difficulty of the job being the biggest). There are four employees to cover 21 8-hour shifts each week (24 hours a day, 7 days a week total).
If someone calls in sick, the one of the others has to cover the shift. Under no circumstances can the house ever be unstaffed. Aside from a bit of overtime pay, the company isn't hurt, but everyone else is.
Not all jobs are like this. The consequences of taking a sick day as a vacation day (or simply being sick) usually aren't that severe. Maybe it's a manufacturing line and the manager has to step in to fill your role or something. Maybe it has no effect at all on anyone around you. In those cases, maybe it doesn't make sense for the company to distinguish between time off for being sick, and time off for vacation.
> The whole point of PTO is that the company is agreeing to give you 10 days worth of slack.
No, that's only true if the company doesn't distinguish between sick time off and vacation time off. Typically, where I've worked, all PTO was lumped into a single bucket, and no-one really cared. However, that is really more true of white collar work with long timelines and not so much in most other jobs (or the parent post I was replying to).
Well, I disagree with your assessment that by taking my sick days I am hurting another employee. It's actually you, as the employer, who offered me 10 days of sick leave, and who knowingly understaffed your workplace assuming that I wouldn't use that time off, who is hurting your employees. Don't rationalize it by putting the responsibility on me. You're the one who told me I was allowed to do it. If you don't want to offer 10 days of paid sick leave then don't offer it, but don't punish me for using it, and don't try to guilt me out of using it by pretending that I'm the one creating the situation. It's your job to staff your workplace appropriately.
So do those consequences you mention suddenly disappear if you're _actually_ sick? The fixation on "abuse" and that it can be easily determined doesn't make sense.
No, the consequences don't disappear. But, if you're in a position where when there's a difference in notice required for planned (vacation) and unplanned (sick) time off, and you take sick time off for vacation, you're effectively creating an unnecessary disruption. Maybe the manager has to scramble to find someone willing to come in on short notice. Maybe a temp staffer has to be hired in from an agency. Maybe that's not feasible, and someone has to work a double shift. Depends entirely on the job.
If it doesn't matter, then the company shouldn't be distinguishing between vacation and sick time off anyway. If it does matter, then personally I wouldn't want to work with someone who would do that.
My father once told me that honor is what separates men from animals, and honor is what you do when nobody is looking. We all get to choose who we are.
I was also fortunate to attend a university with an honor system, to the extent that exams weren't even allowed to be proctored. Whether you cheated or not was up to you, nobody would know.
I appreciated that system, and have tried to live it long after graduation. I could go on, but it has proved to be more than worthwhile.
The honor system in the university trusted people to not cheat and they did not proctor exams. That doesn't mean cheating was condoned. If two students made exactly the same mistakes on an exam, there'd be an investigation, and consequences if it were found they'd cheated.
You don't want a world where being untrustworthy is easy to get away with and incentivized though, IMO. That contradicts your goal, since it means more people will decide to be untrustworthy.
That would be a valid reason to ask for a doctor's note. But even then I'd only do it if their absence is negatively impacting productivity and they're really needed at work. Or if there is something else in their performance I was concerned about.
Otherwise a lot of offices are basically empty at that time, so who cares? As long as they're not coming to work when they're actually sick so they can hoard sick days, does it matter?
:If your sick your sick,and you do not need a doctors note to take you sick time you just change it in your Amazon AtoZ. How you use your time is up to you.
Rachel-Amazon FC Ambassador
Employment is a business arrangement and both parties are merely obligated to fulfill the letter of the contract they have entered into - honorable or not. If the company hits hard times will "honor" keep them from getting rid of the employee who keeps getting sick? If the company allots a limited number of sick days, the employee is entitled to take them whenever they feel they can't be productive, for whatever reason.
Honor, responsibility, and sacrifice are important in personal relationships. You should still be honorable and reliable in your relationships with each individual within the company.
You're supposed to use sick days to take care of a sick dependent, too. Most single parents I've worked with always take all their allocated sick days because they use them when they're sick or when they have to stay home with a sick kid.
That definition varies by jurisdiction and (where not legally mandated) by company... But yes, it seems fair to allow sick time to be used for that purpose too instead of requiring them to spend vacation time.
No. His argument was "she only took 10 sick days, as many as our paid sick days policy", so he deduced she was faking it.
Such reasoning, especially when it affects promotion opportunities etc, is not just without proof, but also immoral, and punishable by law. At least in the civilized western world (Europe) it would be.
We seem to believe that sick always means some type of physical illness that means we can't work, which is completely wrong. Taking a sick day for mental health is totally OK. Taking a sick day to deal with a sick child or spouse or s.o. is totally OK. Leaving sick days on the table at the end of the year is not something that should be valued, whether they are paid or not. I'm sure HR makes every attempt to spend their entire budget before the year is out, so why should employees be held to a different standard? If you get 10 days, take all 10 days. If your bonus is determined by the number of sick days you take vs. the number given, then you need to find another employer. We need to stop letting this bullshit slide - you should never be penalized for accepting and using the resources given to you.
Taking a sick day and calling on sick are two different things.
I had a job where all unscheduled days off where taken from sick days based on company policy. Vacation days needed or be scheduled ahead of time therefore people valued sick days a little more than vacation days.
Others just put them all into the same pool. It’s more about what the policy actually is than what you call it.
> Taking a sick day and calling on sick are two different things.
I think there's a locale difference here. Here in the UK, they very much are the same thing (faking sickness could get you fired if you're somehow found out), and we don't generally treat sick days as a pool to be drawn from.
I can believe someone taking 10 sick days off a year and no more. You take the paid time off if you're sick without much hesitation, and after that you weigh up whether you're sick enough to cost you a day's pay.
People should use their sick leave - that's what it's for. This "no raise for using sick leave" argument is no better than the overwork culture that's been discussed at length lately.
Mind you, I'm not an engineer, I'm a teacher. Unless it's seriously contagious or I'm basically unable to function I don't tend to use my sick leave because it's more work to prepare lessons for a replacement teacher than it is to come to work and teach.
A male manager denies a raise to a female engineer on the basis that the female engineer takes 10 sick days per year that their contract says they are entitled to.
Why is it important to emphasise sex in this? Periods.
The experience is different for each person but the fact that they didn't feel able to take 12 may itself be a problem. And even 10 would only allow the taking of a single day each month during the worst symptoms. Whilst at the same time leaving yourself with no days were you to get a cold later in the year.
That seems plausible to me, especially if they have a chronic illness. Places I have been would make you use PTO if you had no sick days so then it becomes a cost/benefit analysis. Do you feel bad enough to use up PTO or can you "suffer through it".
I'd be the first to agree with you. However, allowing a stellar performer to come and go as they please tends to have a bad effect on morale of the rest and impairs team cohesiveness.
I guess it depends on the team dynamics. If someone's good and show up for the big pushes, I'd take a lot. We had a chap on our team at my current company who worked from home every Friday, even though it was sub-optimal for planning meetings around sprint boundaries. But he was very productive.
One of the reasons I decided not to move to the US after I got my H-1B was because of the parsimonious approach to vacation days. Only 10 days of paid leave, for someone who's moving across the Atlantic. If I wanted to spend some time with my friends and family, it would need to be two weeks to make the flight time worthwhile, and that would take 100% of my vacation for a whole year.
And it was non-negotiable. Vacation increases beyond a one-off for the first year was a perk for tenure, not a negotiable form of compensation. And even if I didn't want to come back to Europe; why would I take a job that only gave me 10 days a year to do with what I want? Life is for living, not just working. It was a crunch point, a decisive factor in not moving to SV for me.
I honestly think that's a terrible idea, and that paid sick leave should be paid not by the employer, but from taxes. Which should be raised slightly to cover such a policy.
Otherwise, hiring someone presents a gigantic risk for smaller companies. Getting unlucky even once with someone that will use 1-2 years of sick leave (legitimately or not) would be enough to bankrupt them.
In general I think making employers pay for a safety net, instead of funding it from taxes paid by those employers, is universally bad. What it does is make employers discriminate against potential hires likely to need that safety net, which makes those in need even worse off.
I like the way it's handled in Germany: Your employer is on the hook for 6 weeks, after that insurance takes over. Cases like being sick for the same reason again are covered as well. And the employer may demand a signed statement from a special doctor if he suspects cheating (this will only say wether the person may work, no details).
It could however be that he's talking about firing the person, in which case it's pretty hard in Germany as well. As far as I know early retirement or a termination from the employee are pretty much the only way. Social security mitigates this risk, however, and the protections are lower for part time/student jobs, so hiring is not made too risky.
to add to the other german poster. in germany you are required to see a doctor to have a sick day. because a signed statement is needed for the company. they get money back from the insurance for the singed doctor statement.
I'm not defending that kind of employee misbehaviour, but how to handle that doesn't need to be factored into the sick leave policy beyond making the allowed usage clear and reserving the right to ask for proof when the company has reason to be suspicious.
How to handle that, more broadly, is the same as how to handle any other pattern of employee misbehaviour: some appropriate level of employee discipline according to the misbehaviour's severity and the history of past incidents, ranging from an informal conversation to what the manager in your story did to firing, with many intermediate possibilities.
Asking for a doctor's note is for children. These are professional adults.
Often people who behave unethically at work believe they are getting away with it. But then they wonder why they don't get raises, are passed over for promotions, are let go in the first round of layoffs, and don't have the respect of their peers.
Well, I agree with the other responses that the manager is being passive aggressive by just handling it at raise time. But professional adults don't behave unethically at work. (A lot of adults in positions labelled as professional do, however. I'd call them unprofessionals rather than professionals.)
People need explicit negative feedback sometimes, and if bad faith is proven and not reversed quickly, the termination process should start. The doctor's notes are for the category of people that behave unethically regardless of age, and when the latter is suspected, the former can be temporarily appropriate given good reason for suspicion and after trying the direct approach of discussing the problem. I'm a manager and have never requested a doctor's note. I hope never to have to.
If I were this manager's manager, I'd have two people whose performance and attitude I'd need to correct, not one.
Anyway, my preferred rule is unlimited paid sick days, even when vacation days are limited. And yes, I've worked at places that use that rule. Just like you don't get to choose when you get sick, you don't get to choose how severely you get sick when you get sick.
As others have said, a long sickness should not all be at the expense of the employer. But plenty of places have mandatory disability insurance paid for by payroll deductions and employer contributions, including New York and Canada to name two examples I'm aware of.
I mean, if that's the path we're going down...is telling someone they can only be sick for 10 days in a year treating them like a professional adult person in the first place?
You can take an unpaid leave if you need more. If you have temporary disability insurance through work (and I would imagine most US software developers do), you can file a claim to compensate you for lost wages due to a medical condition.
I've never in my full-time tech industry career had government-mandated disability insurance with a maximum benefit anywhere near my actual earnings, and voluntary plans were not offered at most of my smaller employers. Additionally most disability insurance has a nontrivial waiting period that only covers cases where it's a single absence lasting weeks or months.
I'm from Sweden and I used to work at a warehouse before and between my stuides. Here, everything if focused about the rights for the employee. As soon as you have worked for 6 months at one place, you have what we call "permanent employment", which basically means that you can't be fired unless you repeatedly fuck up big time (coming drunk to work repeatedly, steal from the company etc).
Anyway, here you can be sick for 5 days in a row (and get 80% of your salary), after that you have to go to a doctor and get a paper that you are in fact sick. Futhermore, you can be sick for 6 times a year, after that you have to talk to the boss and explain yourself. People used this to the maximum, meaning that on top of the 5 weeks per year people got payed vacation, they were all "sick" an additional 6 weeks, always 5 days at a time. The employers can't do anything, as people with permanent employment can't be fired.
Then he is an absolute idiot. The engineer could be sickly and be sick 20 or more days in a year, but only take the minimum allowed (to not lose her paycheck).
I'm down with flu, stomach issues, gout and a few other things far more days in a year than the company's paid sick leave. And while I might not take all of them, and go to work sick, it's within the rights of anybody to do so.
If the company is offering 10 paid sick days, and he is discriminating based on using those, then he should be sued to extinction...
I've seen and heard about many different sick pay schedules because of this. From ones that accrue like vacation and PTO from zero as hours are worked, ro ones where the days are all allocated on the first of the year to be used (I assume pro-rated for mid-year hires) to ones that are a hybrid where some portion of the yearly sick days are allocated at the beginning of the year and the rest are accrued. There are benefits and drawbacks to each, and probably a lot of interesting behavioral nudges in each scheme that affect different types of work in different ways.
