Aussies are bigger slackers than Kiwis

Workers should take more sick days, not fewer. Photo / APN

It's official. Australians are bigger slackers than us. That is one of the interesting facts I discovered while researching the Great New Zealand Sickie.

Right up there with the shirking-Aussie confirmation is news that eating lunch at your work station increases your propensity to take sick days. I learned that while munching an egg sandwich at my desk.

Turns out it's not solely because keyboards are worse than loo seats for harbouring germs but because you are a sad-sack for eating alone at work and unhappy employees take more sickies.

Those, such as visiting sportswriters, who prefer to have their meals at, let's say, Kermadec in the Viaduct, are more likely to be more jolly and so less likely to need a "mental health day".

In other important sickie news... if you come down with a real and serious illness, it is best to emigrate to Luxembourg. Or Norway.

Those countries offer the best deal for those fighting something like cancer, with up to 50 days' paid leave.

Snapping at their heels are near-neighbours Finland, Austria and Germany, which all allow well over 40 days' paid leave.

Meanwhile, down at the bottom of the graph of the sick leave policies of 22 nations, is New Zealand, in second-to-last place with five days.

Five days - the same legal entitlement as for a pesky case of flu. Even Australia - fourth-to-last - allows 10 days off for really serious illness.

Other facts discovered in the wake of the Government's announcement that it plans to give employers the right to immediately demand a medical certificate as proof of sickness or injury is that New Zealand hasn't collected any hard facts.

No empirical, independent evidence to show there is a big problem here or that Kiwis abuse sick days any more than employees in other countries. Nothing solid to confirm that rorts are on the rise.

The Herald asked the Ministry of Labour, the Department of Statistics and the ACC for sick-day data. They had none, which probably
means Metiria Turei was right when she said as much this week. The Green MP went on to say that in the absence of evidence of a problem, there was no need to change the law.

Government and employers disagree. Minister of Labour Kate Wilkinson told a reporter, "the matter has been raised with us".

Prime Minister John Key cited, as an example, Mondayitis in the meat industry.

Wilkinson's spokesman, Christian Bonnevie, acknowledged the dearth of objective information but said there was plenty of pretty compelling anecdotal stuff in the form of messages from employers up and down the land that indicates the need for a more effective tool to tackle the worst habitual malingerers.

Currently, employers need "reasonable grounds" to suspect this.

Under the proposed rules, the boss can ring you on your first day off and demand a certificate.

The boss need only suspect that you are fibbing about that claimed bout of food poisoning, no need for "reasonable grounds" such as that you've used that excuse a half-dozen times already.

The Government says that by requiring the employer to pay for the medical certificate (about $50, if you can get a doctor's appointment) over-zealous use of such a law would be deterred.

It's expected, says Bonnevie, that the average employee who might throw a rare sickie will be unaffected.

Speaking of deterrence, it's also thought that the fear of being challenged any time you are off sick will cause people to think twice about faking it.

But could the proposed new provision be abused, for example, to pressure an unwanted employee to resign? Bonnevie acknowledges that is possible, though unlikely, and that such a tactic risks an employment dispute.

How bad are we on the sickie front? Available information suggests Kiwis are pretty good compared with employees in Britain and Australia.

The 2009 National Employers Wage and Salary Survey found the average number of sick days we took in the preceding 12 months was 4.6 days.

The survey draws on 593 employers with 38,216 employees and so might be considered a reasonable guide.

Compare that with 7.4 sick days on average in Britain. That figure is the latest from the annual Absence Management Survey which questions 600 employers, and was an improvement on eight days the previous year.

It noted that public sector workers (9.7 days) took most sick days, while those in manufacturing and production (6.5 days) took least.

The decrease in sick days overall was put down to job insecurity due to the recession. The sector that recorded the lowest figure includes the most affected by the recession, with carmakers, steelworkers and others making huge cuts in staff.

And it appears employees are right to worry about that. Absence records were reported by 40 per cent of employers to form part of their redundancy selection criteria.

Australians, on the other hand, don't seem to be feeling the fear. They're averaging 8.6 sick days, which was up 19 per cent (or 0.7 days) on the previous year.

An article in The Australian in January predicted that 500,000 Aussies would be "crook" the Monday after Australia Day to blag a four-day weekend - at an estimated cost to businesses of A$257 million.

Australian absence-management firms advised employers to have televisions at work tuned to the recent football World Cup to stem a wave of sickies. It was, after all, one of their prime ministers, Bob Hawke, who said when Australia (long ago) won the America's Cup: "Any boss that sacks an employee for taking today off is a bum!"

It's not just the Aussies. Almost anyone is willing to tell a porkie to get a day off. Dr Marc Wilson, a senior psychology lecturer at Victoria University, put that to the test in a survey, prompted by the Clayton Weatherston trial to gauge willingness to tell lies.

Of the 4400 people surveyed, 72 per cent admitted taking a sick day when not ill.

"I suspect it is actually 100 per cent," says Wilson, who notes we are good at rationalising such things to ourselves.

When we throw a sickie, the lure of the long weekend is a strong motivator. There doesn't appear to be any New Zealand stats on this but the British figures probably reflect our behaviour.

Monday, which accounted for 34 per cent of sick days, was most popular, followed by Friday at 26 per cent, while there was little illness about on a Wednesday.

Wilson agrees about the lure of the long weekend but says there are those who soldier on when ill, expecting to get better over the weekend but who feel just as bad come Monday.

Setting a quota of sick days creates a sense of entitlement to take them.

Wilson notes that companies with unlimited sick leave tend to have fewer people taking sick days than those who have a set number of days.

It's interesting, he says, that the New Zealand average of 4.6 sick days is close to the five days most workplaces allow.

Taking the maximum entitlement is a common complaint Business New Zealand hears from the country's 76,000 employers.

Another is "shiftwork syndrome" - high absenteeism by shiftworkers on weekends with big events such as The Big Day Out.

Neither example is what Business NZ Employment Relations manager Paul Mackay says could be called pandemic but neither is the proposed law change dramatic.

"It's a tool to get early resolution rather than change the culture of anything."

Wilson warns the proposed new law might fall down when it comes to non-physical ailments.

"The problem there, is they are a bit trickier to peg [for a medical certificate]. You don't necessarily have snot running out of your nose because you are feeling too depressed to go to work."

Professionals tend to take fewer sick days than the unskilled and semi-skilled. That may be because professionals are more likely to push themselves or are happier in their work but also because they are more confident they can ask for time off without being considered a slacker, says Wilson.

HR consultants talk about improving work-life balance with the likes of flexible hours and gym memberships. One suggests offering an extra week of leave at Christmas to staff who took no sick days during the year.

That might appeal even to the Aussies.

But here's the thing - the average Aussie wouldn't have got this story done.

I was up to 4am Friday with friends and an ample sufficiency of red wine, witnessing live the Tour de France-showdown on that beast of the Pyrenees, the Col du Tourmalet. Contador and Schleck, slugging it out Mano-a-mano. Compulsory viewing.

Being a typical dilgent Kiwi, I didn't invoke the sudden bout of food poisoning but hauled my bleary-eyed self into the office and finished the job.

I hope the boss is reading. Perhaps he'll shout me lunch at Kermadec!

TOP FIVE REASONS FOR WAGGING WORK
* Hangover: 89 per cent
* Tired from late night: 68 per cent
* Wanting to stay home with partner: 53 per cent
* Wanting a holiday: 49 per cent
* Couldn't be bothered going to work: 47 per cent