Study shows federal employee sick leave abuse
May 21, 2008 by Fred HosierPosted in: Dubious decisions, In this week's e-newsletter, Latest News & Views
How many employees will call out sick the day after Memorial Day? A new study quantifies this type of sick leave abuse at one federal agency, and a U.S. Representative has an idea on how to limit it.
If employees at your workplace used 85% of their sick days every year, you’d probably look into a change in the policy.
That’s exactly what a recent report by the Inspector General found about IRS employees. Workers at the tax agency took an average of 11 out of their available 13 sick days in 2006. The study also showed frequent use of sick days on Tuesdays following a Monday holiday.
Here’s where the federal government may have blundered: The study suggests the high percentage of used sick days is partially caused by a change in the federal employees’ retirement benefits plan about 20 years ago. Workers covered under the new system aren’t allowed to fold their unused sick leave into their pension benefits when they retire. Employees grandfathered into the old system can take compensation for unused sick leave upon retirement.
So, if losing an incentive to not use sick days is the problem, how about providing such an incentive?
That’s what Rep. James Moran (D-VA) has proposed. Moran has introduced a bill that would provide federal employees under the new retirement plan with a lump-sum payment for any unused sick leave at retirement.
The incentive would be payment for 15% of all unused sick hours above 500. Payments would be capped at a maximum of $10,000.
It may not be a bad idea. At a previous job, HRB had an incentive for not using sick days: If an employee went four months without using a sick day, he/she would earn an extra vacation day.
HRB’s point of view: Why sneak around using sick time for an extra day off when you could earn bonus vacation days?
Of course, the potential problem with these plans is workers not taking sick days when they really need them and infecting those healthy individuals at work with their cold or flu bug.
Has your company done something that limits abuse of sick time yet doesn’t encourage employees from taking a sick day when they really need it? Let us know about it.
Tags: call out sick, policy, sick leave
May 23rd, 2008 at 10:33 am
Our company has an accrual and reimbursement policy. After an employee accumulates 30 days, he or she may not accumulate further sick leave. If, at the employee’s anniversary date, he or she has remaining sick days beyond the 30 “banked,” we pay the employee 1/2 of the unused sick leave. However, I do caution employees not to come to work sick for three reasons: 1) Spreading illness to other employees, 2) Longer recovery time for the sick and working employee, and 3) Subpar performance for the sick and working employee.
May 23rd, 2008 at 10:38 am
I once worked for a bank and I think their policy was the best. If an employee used sick or vacation on the day before or after a holiday they did not get paid for the holiday. If they had vacation time an extra day was taken from them. This way, if an employee was determined to have the long weekend they could but had to “pay” for it. This not only kept abuse down it kept morale high because the other employees did not have ill feelings for the system or the employee.
May 23rd, 2008 at 11:24 am
Sick leave as described above is simply another word for vacation. If it’s a use it or loose plan, of course I would “plan” to be sick to extend holidays. That’s stealing. Benefits should only be paid for sickness (proofed with doctor’s slip) - period. That’s what it’s for. Our tax dollars should not be used to pay for unused sick days, because employees are paid when working. Unused sick days are double pay. Those of us who go to work, earn the tax dollars in the first place.
May 23rd, 2008 at 11:44 am
Has our company done something to limit abuse of sick time? We think so… Unlike the federal employees who receive a ridiulous 13 sick days (many private sector employees don’t earn that much VACATION time!) our employees are given 3 personal days (use for sickness or other reasons) for the calendar year, and the hourly employees get their balance paid out in their final check at the end of the year if they haven’t used it during the year.
It figures the government’s answer to sick leave abuse would be to reward people for not using it instead of CUTTING the available amount to something comparable to the private sector!
May 23rd, 2008 at 12:05 pm
At our company, a small, 50+ workers, private business, we’ve nixed the calling in sick (or otherwise) on the day before or after a holiday. To receive your Holiday pay, you must be present on the scheduled workdays before and after the holiday. Pretty much end of subject.
PS - I’m with Kim Benac on the excessive number of sick days allowed to fed employees - while we have holiday and accrued vacation pay here, we have no sick pay whatsoever. A few days would be nice, but thirteen is crazy - that’s almost three weeks! Just one more reason for an unbalanced federal budget.
May 23rd, 2008 at 12:18 pm
Our company has a penalty for our hourly employees - if you use sick leave before or after a holiday - you will not get paid for the holiday. Now, the question is are they giving 100% or what is the quality of the product we produce on the day after a holiday. That is still to be seen.
May 23rd, 2008 at 1:15 pm
Our company has a similar policy that others have already mentioned: if you call out sick, on the day before, or the day after a holiday, unless you have a Dr’s note proving the illness, you do not get paid for the holiday.
The other thing, about sick time, is that we don’t get paid until the 3rd day of being sick, and even then we only receive 80% of our pay for that day, AND there must be documentation from a Dr. I think this helps curb our employees from using sick time as added vacation time.
May 23rd, 2008 at 2:18 pm
We also do the same for holiday pay - no unscheduled absences allowed the day before or after a holiday in order to receive your holiday pay.
Changing to this policy might solve the problem for the government all by itself - since they get so many holidays (compared to us in the printing industry, we get only 6 paid holidays annually) if they can’t call in sick the day before or after all their paid holidays they will barely get a chance to use their sick pay. Tee hee.
May 23rd, 2008 at 6:35 pm
First, as a Federal employee myself, I disagree with Mary and Kim about the “ridiculous” 13 days of sick leave I earn each year. It is simply a benefit (and a well deserved one)of being a Federal employee. I don’t abuse my sick leave and had accrued nearly 1000 hours prior to a recent illness.
Second, my earning 13 days sick leave doesn’t affect the national budget in the least. I’m going to get paid for 80 hours a a pay period regardless of how the hours are broken down into regular time, SL or AL. If I take a sick leave day, those 8 hours are coded as sick leave and are part of my 80 hours and are not an additional 8 hours.
Finally, I think Rep. Moran’s idea is a great one-I’m a little bummed that I won’t get paid for my unused sick leave upon retirement. I’ve known lots of fellow employees that do abuse their sick leave and then don’t have any to use when they really need it.
May 26th, 2008 at 1:21 pm
Our company doesn’t have paid holiday days and sick pay is only paid out beginning the 3rd day of illness. While I agree that the wait-period policy does cut down on the use of illegitimate sick hours, I believe it encourages employees to either: 1) come in when they are sick and should stay home, or 2) if they are sick enough to stay home for 2 days, why not make it 3 and take “an extra day to really recover” since sick pay kicks in? We are a retail store and coming in sick (that includes customers!) provides greater opportunity to spread illnesses. I would be in favor of reducing the benefit hours and relax (a little) the requirements to use them. I resent it when coworkers come in sick, but I also understand why they do under the current policy.
May 26th, 2008 at 4:08 pm
Federal employees have too many days off. They should join the real world. We only get 6 paid holidays like the rest of you and we have the same policy. You must work the day before and after the holidy in order to get paid. Our vacation and sick is lumped into PTO time. Therefore, you want sick time, vacation time, personal time, or whatever, you request the time off ahead of time. No questions ask, it’s approved, no one gets upset, period the end. This has limit the calling in sick almost to zero on those long weekends.
May 27th, 2008 at 9:59 am
We do not have sick days. If you are sick we pay you but we monitor the incident rate. An incident is one day or five days. If you have 3 incidents in a 3 month period, a warning is given and it is progressive up to termination. As we tell people, we are all adults and they will be treated that way.
If you are out sick before or after a holiday, you must come in with a doctor’s note and if you have an incident longer than 3 days you need a doctor’s note. The doctor’s note, as we explain is to protect them and their fellow employees, we want to make sure that they are better and can work and not infect others.
This year, we are averaging 2.8 days out per employee for the last 12 months. We only count the first 5 consecutive days when someone is out since they go on disability on the sixth day.
May 27th, 2008 at 5:59 pm
We use an incentive program. If an employee goes an entire calendar quarter without using sick leave, s/he gets a day off with pay. Employees who go the entire calendar year without sick leave receive a fifth day off with pay. Yes, we have had empoyees do it.
May 28th, 2008 at 6:38 pm
Working for a non-profit we are always looking for extra perks due to low wages. I currently receive 20 hours of PTO (used for vacation, sick time, or personal time) each month and have been working here for 5 yrs. It seems quite generous to me and I am more than happy to use it for vacations and personal days … I occasionally use it for sick time, but not much. I don’t come to work sick; I’m just not sick very often. It is one of the things we deal with (sick employees coming to work) and I have come to the conclusion that it really doesn’t matter what kind of leave policy (paid/not paid, vacation time, sick time, PTO, etc.) you will have employees that come to work sick, employees that will abuse the policy, and employees that don’t.
Sick leave that is over three days in length or that occurs several times a month may be asked for a doctor’s note. When a doctor’s note has been request, employees are not allowed to return to work without a doctor’s note releasing them to full duty.
June 25th, 2008 at 3:49 pm
I am not a Federal employee, however I believe that they deserve the vacation and sick time that they receive. I believe that if we were to take that benefit away from them they should be compensated accordingly. It is common knowledge that state and federal employees are earning considerably less than their corporate counterparts. Therefore, I think it actually saves the taxpayers money in the long run to pay out 13 sick days rather than bring their salaries up to a corporate equivalent.
June 27th, 2008 at 10:57 am
Years ago I read an article which stated that employee use of sick leave will be exactly what you, the employer, want it to be. In other words, if you place management emphasis on use of sick leave, it will not be abused. Even though one of my former employers provided 10 sick days per year, average useage was 4.7. The number wqs published each year for all employees as a benchmark. Use of sick leave was an entry on the annual performance appraisal. Excessive use of sick leave would get you placed on a corrective action plan and potentially terminated if not corrected.
July 9th, 2008 at 12:38 pm
Our small company used to provide 5 accrued “sick days” per year. If they were not used by December 31, they were forfeited. Because most of our employees are “billable”, the amount of sick calls in December effectively reduced our income. At my suggesstion, we changed “Sick Time” to “Personal Time” which can be used for any reason. Our employees do not have to lie and say they are sick in order to get a day off. If they want to take the day after a holiday…they are free to set it up in advance without causing a hardship on co-workers as we are now prepared for it. If the personal time is not used, it is paid out with the final paycheck of the year. It’s a win-win situation.