Conscious absence

Some employees consciously choose to be absent from work without an obvious good reason. Some see sick leave as an extension of their holiday entitlement, for example. You may notice a pattern in sickness absence predominantly on Mondays or Fridays, or before or after a planned day off. Very often this type of sickness absence is made up of single days. “I have four days holiday and three more sick days to take before the end of the year” is an extreme example of this type of behaviour.

This situation is a problem of attitude and basic engagement between an employee and their employer. It is more common in workers who do a job with little interest that is less well remunerated – the psychological contract is never strongly established from the start. This is one of the reasons why questions probing a person’s attitude to work are now commonly asked in interviews.

You might notice that an employee with a previously good attendance record is starting to be absent from work more often. While the employee might not consciously decide to be absent more from work, over time the ‘illness threshold’ that must be reached before they would feel too ill to go to work, can fall. The cold they might have struggled into work with during the first flush of enthusiasm for a new role becomes too much when they are going through a phase of not enjoying their role at work as much.

We’ve probably all experienced this at some point in our careers, even if it did not result in an unauthorised day off work. When our job is less enjoyable, problems seem to occur all the time and it seems to take more energy to get out of bed. If this lack of motivation is causing a problem, then it is probably time for a frank discussion.