+25% of Employers Think Employees Fake Illness to Explain an Absence

More Than A Quarter of Employers Think More Employees are Calling in Sick with Fake Excuses Due to Stress Tied to the Recession, Finds CareerBuilder’s Annual Survey

Chicago - While the cold and flu season serves as a primary culprit in workplace absences, the economy may be a factor as well this year. CareerBuilder’s annual survey on absenteeism shows nearly one-third (32 percent) of workers have played hooky from the office this year, calling in sick when they were well at least once. Twenty-eight percent of employers think more employees are absent with fake excuses due to increased stress and burnout caused by the recession. The nationwide survey included more than 4,700 workers and 3,100 employers.

While the majority of employers said they typically don’t question the reason for an absence, 29 percent reported they have checked up on an employee who called in sick and 15 percent said they have fired a worker for missing work without a legitimate excuse. Of the 29 percent of employers who checked up on an employee, 70 percent said they required the employee to show them a doctor’s note. Fifty-two percent called the employee at home, 18 percent had another worker call the employee and 17 percent drove by the employee’s house or apartment.

"Longer hours and heavier workloads are common in the current economic climate and employers are becoming more flexible with their time off policies," said Rosemary Haefner, vice president of human resources at CareerBuilder. "Sixty-three percent of companies we surveyed said they let their team members use sick days for mental health days. If you need time to recharge, your best bet is to be honest with your manager."

More than one-in-ten workers (12 percent) who played hooky admitted to calling in sick because of something work-related, such as to miss a meeting, give themselves some more time to work on a project or avoid the wrath of a boss, colleague or client. Others missed work because they needed to go to a doctor’s appointment (31 percent), needed to relax (28 percent), catch up on sleep (16 percent), run personal errands (13 percent), catch up on housework (10 percent) or spend time with family and friends (10 percent). An additional 32 percent just didn’t feel like going to work that day

When asked to share the most unusual excuses employees gave for missing work, employers offered the following real-life examples:

• I got sunburned at a nude beach and can’t wear clothes.

• I woke up in Canada.

• I got caught selling an alligator.

• My buddies locked me in the trunk of an abandoned car after a weekend of drinking.

• My mom said I was not allowed to go to work today.

• A bee flew in my mouth.

• I’m just not into it today.

• I accidentally hit a nun with my motorcycle.

• A random person threw poison ivy in my face and now I have a rash.

• I’m convinced my spouse is having an affair and I’m staying home to catch them.

• I was injured chasing a seagull.

• I have a headache from eating hot peppers.

Amazing.

Here is the link to the original release. Thank you CareerBuilder for always amusing us!

Maybe the problem is not you … just your environment

Today we present an article by a new HR-Worldview Guest Author.

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This year at My Next Path, we have worked with a certain number of clients who started a coaching process because they felt uneasy with their current job. Some of them even got the unpleasant sensation they might have some sort of issue. When we started working together, they in fact quite quickly came to realize that they did not have any problem themselves: the source of their trouble was their environment! Therefore, instead of feeling bad, stuck, paralyzed or sometimes worst, what they had to do was actively take action and work their way out to another environment that would better fit them. Let us explain more below.

Mary*has been working for 8 years in the same company. She was a middle manager in the sales and marketing area. She had always been travelling a lot for her job and liked it. She liked her industry and was very knowledgeable about key factors of success, players, etc. But more recently, she had 3 different bosses in 2 years, an increasing pressure and despite good results in her region, little recognition. Her self confidence was eroded and she found herself drowned in micro-management tasks imposed by an insecure manager. When we started working together, Mary was really unsure about her own abilities.

After a few sessions of analyzing what she thought were her issues, she came to realize, she had lost her self confidence because of the environment (poor management, wrong cultural fit etc), not because she had problems herself! In fact, she was perceptive enough to take action, seek help, and finally take that healthy distance to realize that. A few months later, Mary landed a new job in a company more in line with her style and expectations. Although everyone around her told her to stick to her current job because of the tough economy, she overcame her initial fear, dedicated the appropriate time to look for the right opportunity and found one.

We have seen more than one case similar to Mary’s this year: Before feeling bad about yourself and jumping to conclusions, make sure you are able to analyze your situation with perspective. Actively take action to find a work environment that better fits you maybe the best decision you will ever make! This obviously could mean changing company but not necessarily. This could also mean changing job/department within a corporation: very often in big companies, people have been offered jobs that do not properly fit their profile; by changing to another job, area or department within the company, they suddenly feel better and everybody wins.

About our Guest Authors:

Myriam Le Cannellier and Catherine Bortolotti are Career Coaches who work with professionals who are experiencing a transition in their career, because of relocation, an unexpected situation in their current job or the will to make a significant change in their professional life. Learn more about them at www.mynextpath.com

A Question of Balance: Querying the Work-Life Conundrum

As part of our series of articles by exceptional HR professionals, today we present a coaching article by a new guest author, David Finney.

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I have a problem with the term ‘work-life balance’. It implies that life begins when work finishes. The words we use are critical to our self awareness, our situation-reading and to our learning and development, and yet we pick up phrases like jackets in a wardrobe, trying them on for size and sometimes keeping on something that doesn’t quite fit in the absence of anything better.

Our conversations are derived from a variety of sources: education, literacy, sound bites from the media, parental hand-me-downs and phrases we’ve picked up from our friends, family or business colleagues. Words are not truly our own. They sit on a large menu from which we make our selection, in an attempt to find the right combination that suits the way we are feeling at any given time.

Interpreting stress

The phrase ‘work/life balance’ originated in the eighties. it seemed OK at the time: a way of interpreting stress, a reminder to leave the office before dark. it’s a phrase we have picked up, taken on board and maybe even formed a goal around.

But what if WLB is reinforcing the belief that the working day is simply a prelude to a sigh of relief at the end of it? What if these words are encouraging our clients to move away from rather than towards something? As coach Graham Guest says “Part of the perceived problem of the work-life balance comes about through regarding work as the stuff you do, often reluctantly, to earn money to do the things you really want to do”.

Balance of opposites

Chinese philosophy has always been intrigued with balance: night and day, high and low, winter and summer, dark and light, black and white, left and right,false and true, female and male, as encapsulated by the yin and yang in the I Ching, the ancient Chinese classic text. The yin and yang represent the negative and positive forces in the universe and the “dynamic balance of opposites”. 

The Chinese language itself works in a similar way, using antonyms. These are opposite words placed side by side to represent a concept. So ’hei’ (black) plus ‘bai’ (white) represents morality. ‘Cheng’ (success) plus ‘bai’ (failure) represents outcome or result. ‘Chang’ (long) with ‘duan’ (short) represents the concept of the situation: that’s the long and short of it. So maybe to fully understand certain concepts, one needs to locate and appreciate its direct opposite.

Restoring social order

The Ifaluk are a people that live on an Island in the Pacific Ocean, just a few hundred souls on a piece of land about half a mile in diameter. The Ifaluk don’t approve of anger, so they don’t have a word for it. They have a similar word, and that word is ‘song’. If someone on the island is in a ‘state of song’, they must have a very good reason for it. For instance, the person causing them to experience ‘song’ must have acted in a very immoral way. Then, the person experiencing ‘song’ must find a way to express their feeling in a non-physical, nonviolent, controlled manner.

And so ’song’ is a sign that the social order of the island has been disturbed, the equilibrium tipped. Balance is only restored when the person causing ‘song’ has apologized or offered a gift or similar. Until then, the person experiences ‘metagu’, and feels guilt or pressure from the Ifaluk society until making amends.

The conceptual width of balance is far reaching, and people have the power to create language that suits the world they inhabit.

Authenticity

Buddhism – like Hinduism - is based upon the principle of cause and effect and centers round the Noble Eightfold Path, The Middle Way, which is the avoidance of extremes, leading to balance in thought, words and action. Author Michael Carroll references balance in Buddhism in a different way, encouraging us to accept disorder at work and achieve balance by taking time out in the day, moments to stop and listen to our surroundings, find our source and be authentic.

In our quest for authenticity in love, in leadership and in life, we can discover a harmony that is enduring, that underlies work, play and all the events and segments in our day, something independent of the divides we create.

There is a flip side to the WLB phrase. Its alternate implications are that our ‘work’ finishes when the bell goes. This can cause us to switch off when we come home and lose the social disciplines we had at work: politeness, courtesy, interest in the projects of others, for instance. This could mean we disconnect from our loved ones and the lives they are leading. But true balance is ‘karmic’: every action performed in one part of our lives affects another. Every extra hour at work is one hour less with our families. Every extra hour in bed could mean one less working on our goals.

Unpacking the phrase

As coaches we are trained to use the words our clients use, in a matching and mirroring effect. We are also trained to help our clients analyze their words and check they are the right ones, ensuring that they accurately summarize the intent behind them. So if a client wants to discuss ‘work-life balance’, I believe the coach should help the client reach the ‘right’ words to express exactly how they feel as soon as possible, before progressing too far into the program. I can recall suggesting the word ‘buzz’ to a client to help identify a set of feelings. "Yes! That's the word: buzz!” he exclaimed. “Yes that’s how I feel, thank you!”

Clients tackling issues labeled ‘work-life balance’ need to achieve the same sense of recognition in locating words that describe exactly how they, individually, feel, and then in defining the kind of balance they really want.

In balance

So ‘work-life balance’: is it a harmless label, or an influencing phrase working quietly away in our subconscious? The phrase still concerns me. It’s like a dusty old jacket that needs replacing. An “unhelpful dichotomy” as coach Bill Brand puts it. Our lives are surely not divided up into two opposing parts. It has to be simply a question of balance and what that means to the individual.

A final word from a previous client of mine who revealed in our sixth session, “My life feels more in balance now”. No mention of work or life, just “balance”. Music to a coach’s ears!

About our Guest Author:

David Finney is Quality Director & Coaching Champion in an international market research company with twenty years managerial and people development experience. David has a Diploma in both Corporate & Personal Coaching and is a member of The Association for Coaching.