Managerial Skill Builder No. 2: Minimizing the Use of Sick Days

photo by dt0111

Are you inconvenienced when employees or co-workers call out sick? Want to try and put an end to it? Here is one thing you can do, see if there is any pattern to when your employees use sick time. I’m not talking about something as simple as a Monday morning or on Friday. If you have an employee who is obsessed with football and there is a Monday night game for his favorite team and you notice he called in sick on Tuesday, make a note. It happens a second time, give them a warning that if this happens again they will have to use a vacation day and will not be able to take sick time. Your employee will then tell all of his co-workers and overall sick time usage will decrease.  This works great for holidays, concerts, children’s extracurricular activities, etc. Once people have to start giving up vacation days, they will go ahead and schedule them in advance or get their lazy butts into work.  (Author’s note: I am currently out on medical leave from my job.)