It is reported every year that the Monday after Superbowl Sunday is a day when most Americans take more sick leave than any other single day of the year. The number usually runs around 16 million people. This is in addition to the 10 million plus individuals who planned the day off and another seven to eight million that come to work late that day.
I don’t know what the numbers were for yesterday, but I am sure that it was no different than in past years. Some gastrointestinal physicians say that the main reason people take the day off is because they overloaded on food, sweets and alcohol. Some even say that there are other days that approach the Super Sick Monday, as it is called, as well. Days like after a large holiday such as Christmas or even the day after the college national football championship game. (In that case would it be Cuttin Classes on Tuesday Day, since it has to do with school?)
The fact is that large numbers of employees around in the world say they often call in to work sick when they are not. Apparently China leads in this statistic with about 71 percent of their workers saying the have called in when they felt fine. I guess making iPhones and plastic junk for Walmart really gets to you after a while. France had the lowest rate with only 16 percent saying they cheated (their employers that is). It is a country where wine is served at lunch even in the workplace so who would want to not come to work. The United States is only rated at 52 percent.
There are some questions I have about all this Super Sick Monday stuff and I wonder if anyone has answered these queries.
Who take of Super Sick Monday more, the fans of the losing team or of the winning team? In terms of game this Sunday it had to be Atlanta fans since their team blew such a big lead. If I were a dedicated Falcon fan I would have been sick the whole week after what happened.
As for the parties that are held on Super Bowl Sunday, do the givers or the attendees call in sick more? It would seem giving a party for 30 drunk and crazy people would be a good reason to call in sick the next day to me.
The Monday factor
Since Super Sick Monday falls on the day it does, does anyone take into account that Mondays are often the day when the most people call in sick to work anyway. In fact some researchers say that one third of sick days recorded are for Mondays and even more to the point more call in on Mondays in January than any other month of the year. I know this is a fact from many years of managing people in a dozen different kinds of businesses from retail to government. People hate Mondays, especially when things are not going well at work. Fridays are also a big day too. So are the days after every holiday. Over my career I know I took a few of both for “mental health” reasons myself.
I also (and it would be hard to find out) how many called in because they are actually sick on Super Sick Monday, or if they just were depressed or excited. This would be hard to get people to admit I am sure.
Enough of the questions because there could be thousand of them that delve into every detail of why Super Sick Monday happens and who participates.
How to deal with it?
Over my years in management I saw all kinds of schemes to get people not to call in sick on these and other days. Some businesses have gone so far as to give small bonuses to people who don’t call in sick. Some, because of a large use of sick days during the entire year, pay people for not using them. Others have just combined vacation and sick leave together and called it leave, so no one would have to “call in sick.” I also worked for a company that changed their sick leave policy so you didn’t get any pay for sick leave until you were sick at least three days, but it was retroactive if you were out that long. Consequently no one was ever sick for one day, so instead of the “24 hour flu” callers got the “72 hour flu.”
I once worked at a place where you got 12 sick leave days a year to start (after five years it went to 20) and you could accumulate all those days indefinitely. A number of long time employees (30-40 years) had hundreds of days and when they were getting close to retiring these people who never took a day off, and in fact often came to work sick and infected others, started taking days off like there was a fire sale on the days they had going on. Funny thing was that no one did a dang thing about it because they “were retiring soon.”
Productivity matters
Productivity is a big deal in business, particularly when you are in hard competition with others. Some researchers say that sick leave costs employers almost nine percent of their payroll each year. Sick leave days taken usually affects productivity negatively, although sometimes workplaces that have problem employees find the work place runs much better when those particular employees take a day off. As a manager over the years I had a number of people that I hoped would call in sick as often as they could.
The best way I have found to be sure people show up to work is to not pay them if they are not there. It is interesting that hard working hourly employees that lose money when they don’t come to work tend to never take Super Sick Monday, the day before or after holidays or days close to weekends off. Sounds terrible doesn’t it because I really believe in employees having good benefits, but that is the way it is. Certainly I would never advocate that businesses don’t allow for sick time, but when a business is against a wall financially, employees using sick leave dishonestly can really affect its survival.
They’ll show up at a good job
Barring that kind of draconian move, I found the next best way to keep them coming to work is to make sure that people like working at a business and that they realized when they are off they are missed, not just for the lost productivity, but because they are part of an important team. That group feeling also incurs a responsibility that when they are not there, it affects others negatively. Even with that though, you will still get people who take days off sick who are not really sick. I once thought about tracing the Super Sick Mondays year after year to see how many people and what people took it off at places I worked. But I never got around to it because there is enough negativity dealing with business problems day to day without finding new things to worry about.
So that brings us to a final question.
How many of you that are reading this column took this Super Sick Monday off because you were really sick? And how many of you just took it off because you could?
Guess we will never know that.