Report on Australian’s Taking Unnecessary Sick Leave

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Report on Australian’s Taking Unnecessary Sick Leave

1. Introduction

The infamous 'sickie', better known as sick leave, is leave that workers can take when they cannot attend work due to being sick or injured and is crucial so that employees are not forced to choose between caring for their deteriorating health or working to keep gaining income (Scheil-Adlung & Sandner, 2010). Unfortunately, the sickie is being constantly abused by perfectly healthy Australians for a variety of reasons that often don't actually being sick. People are beginning to believe that taking unwarranted sick leave is a right instead of a privilege, and it is causing major losses in company's profits. The purpose of this report is to identify the potential problems that are causing employees to take unnecessary sick days and the possible solutions to those problems.

In this report, the possible reasons for employee absenteeism being covered are that the workplace roster may not be flexible enough, the staff could possibly be not receiving a sufficient amount of vacation leave from the company, and also some staff may not be feeling mentally capable of attending work on certain days. These points will be supported in sources from peer-reviewed journal articles.

2. Analysis and Critical Evaluation

One reason that employees may be taking unnecessary sick leave is that there may be a lack of flexibility in their workplace. Flexibility in the workplace is a popular way for employees to balance and better manage demands of work, family, and social obligations by allowing employees to modify when and for how long their job related work is performed (Butler, Grzywacz, Ettner & Liu, 2009). Flexible work schedules are often adopted by employers as it giv...

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