Sicknote season hits Britain

24/10/2007 09:35:00

Employers beware! Research from fish4jobs, the UK’s largest recruitment website, reveals a staggering 80% of the country’s workforce admit to pulling a ‘sickie’ on a regular basis. In fact, ‘Sicknote Brits’ are particularly prone to faking it at this time of year as the 24th October – 1st November period marks the longest stretch that we work continuously without having a bank holiday to look forward to.

The fish4jobs.co.uk survey also highlights the top five, often scandalous, reasons that we offer our employers when validating our sickies:

1. “It’s my granddad, he was so old…” – unashamedly lying about a death in the family

2. “I’m seeing stars and stripes everywhere…” - claiming a hangover is actually a migraine

3. “It’s all the rage in Halkidiki at the moment…” - claiming to have caught a foreign disease while on holiday

4. “Life will never be the same without Buster the dog…” - pretending a beloved family pet has died

5. “The roof has just collapsed on me…” – producing spectacularly untrue DIY disaster stories

Out of the fish4jobs survey respondents, over a third (38%) revealed they took a sickie to recover from a session down the pub the night before, one in five skip the working day to attend a job interview and 17% ditch work for a doctor’s appointment. What’s more, a cheeky one in five prefer to take an ‘unofficial’ long weekend by tagging a sickie onto a bank holiday.

Joe Slavin, CEO of fish4, comments, “We all know Brits work the longest hours in Europe and it’s clear from the survey that workers are resorting to pulling a sickie for all sorts of reasons. Employers need to take serious note and look for ways of tackling the Sicknote Culture that’s sweeping the UK. We at fish4jobs have a CEO Day, whereby our staff are given an extra day off at Christmas time to help stop people taking a seasonal sickie!

Joe adds, “Tactics such as allowing a ‘duvet day’, encouraging a job share scheme or installing more ‘working from home’ time are all strategies that more UK employers need to adopt in order to help provide employees with a valid reason to take a last minute day off that is strictly by the book.”

Finally, whilst sickies are currently ‘en vogue’ in Britain, many of us should beware as the survey reveals over a third (38%) have caught a colleague enjoying a day trip out when they should have been tucked up in bed with a tummy bug!

www.fish4jobs.co.uk

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