According to a new survey by CareerBuilder conducted by Harris Poll informs on the recently popular trend of calling in sick to work even when people are not.
CareerBuilder runs an annual survey of sick day excuses. This year showed that workers are increasingly recurring to the technique of calling in sick despite feeling fine. Rates increased to 38 percent of employees who had used this method in the past year, up from 28 percent a year ago.
Some excuses are just plain honest while some other use more extravagant reasons for justifying their job absence. Some of the most creative excuse found by the study included “My grandmother poisoned me with ham,” “I’m stuck under the bed,” “I broke my arm reaching to grab a falling sandwich,” “The universe said I need a day off,” “I poked myself in the eye while combing my hair,” and “My cat is stuck inside the dashboard of my car.” Some people said to had a doctor’s appointment while the other 26 percent were more sincere and just told their bosses they needed to relax.
December was the most popular month for calling in sick, followed by January and February. However only 9 percent said they’ve ever faked being sick during the holidays. Due to the increasing tendency employers now have had to rely on some investigation work to find out if the worker was really sick, according to a survey from CareerBuilder.
CareerBuilder also identified a group of people, especially Millennials, who are fearful about missing a day of pay. Some genuinely sick employees feel they can’t afford to use a sick day and go to work to spread the germs. More than half of employees said they have gone to work sick because they thought the work wouldn’t get done if they didn’t show up.
Of the 52 percent of employees who are allowed at work to use their paid time off however they chose, 27 percent said they still feel obligated to make up an excuse for taking a day off, compared with the 23 percent a year earlier.
Harris Poll included a representative sample of 3,321 full-time workers, 2,326 hiring managers and human resource managers across various industries and company sizes.
Source: Chicago Tribune