Is World Cup Fever a Genuine Illness
May 16 2006
Because many of the World Cup matches will take place during working hours, the level of sickness absence is expected to rise as both men and women call in sick to watch the matches or to recover from drinking afterwards. In Holland insurers are even offering a policy to cover the expected increase.
Employers need not accept spurious sick claims if they have made their position clear to employees. Employee handbooks and other documentation should specify unauthorised absence as a disciplinary matter.
It would be advisable to discuss the World Cup, and indeed Wimbledon and other sporting events with your employees beforehand. Seek to make arrangements that ensure you meet your business needs while allowing some concessions. You may want to allow, or even provide, facilities for employees to watch or keep in touch with matches while at work.
Other alternatives can include allowing annual leave, shift swaps with those not interested in football or tennis, and flexibility over hours. Consulting with staff beforehand, and allowing some concessions, strengthens your hand immeasurably if some employees still take advantage.
You could well gain from concessions. Employees who find their workplace “fun� are more productive and their employers prosper, as evidence from the Sunday Times “Best Companies� testifies. You can ride on the back of England’s success (so long as we have some) by recognising it in the workplace and using it to help create a good atmosphere.
But what do you do if some employees do take advantage of you, nonetheless?
It is wise to treat all reported sickness as genuine in the first instance. But sickness that coincides with important matches should be questioned, and challenged if there are doubts. If you want to take disciplinary action then you need reasonable grounds for believing that a claim of sickness is not genuine.
That means you need to investigate and to establish some evidence that you can put in front of the employee. There may be good circumstantial evidence as passionate supporters rarely hide their enthusiasm and a suspicious pattern of absence is evidence in itself.
In such circumstances you should not shy away from disciplinary warnings. Claiming sickness when it is not genuine is fraud; that and “unauthorised absence� should be listed in the disciplinary rules. Our experience is that one formal warning is invariably enough to set the scene. But never pick on one individual “pour encourager les autres�.
If you have sound grounds in one case and less certain grounds in another then have separate meetings with both employees. These might result in you warning the first employee and giving the second the benefit of the doubt. The skills to conduct a sound disciplinary hearing are easily learned and the results are invariably positive. Having well conducted meetings, whatever the outcomes, sends the right messages.
Is dismissal justified? In most cases the answer has to be no, it would be inappropriate. Yet there are bound to be some cases where it would be a reasonable action.
You would need to follow your disciplinary procedures very carefully making sure that you include the precise 3-steps required by statute. What would matter would be how serious the consequences of the absence could or may have been, how clear your instructions were at the time and the soundness of your evidence for unauthorised absence (as opposed to genuine sickness). In all honesty unless it is really serious, you don’t want to go there.
So, make sure your documentation is correct, consult, get your expectations across firmly, and then you too can relax and enjoy watching your favourite sports matches.
