Reasons for calling in sick are infinite. Of course people get sick, but what if problems in an employees’ personal life compel him or her to call in sick?
There are many reasons for calling in sick.
The first and most obvious one of course is.... people do get sick. The seasonal flu, being involved in an accident, a sports injury or your employee has come to suffer a chronic disease that is unfortunately part of human life.
However there are plenty of reasons, sometimes even non-medical, for an employee to call in sick.
A short list of possible causes of (too much) sick leave:
- Actual physical or mental illness
- An unhealthy lifestyle
- Personal emotional issues
- The need to take care of family members
- Problems in the work place, causing avoidance or stress-related illness
- Lack of understanding of sick leave policies
- Low job-satisfaction and disengagement
- Low quality of life in economic, social and physical terms
- A lack of appreciation at work.
As you can deduct from this short list, there are many causes for sick leave and most of them are non-physical!
Getting to the source of the problem
Our physicians are trained to be able to recognize when a person is calling in sick for other reasons than a physical illness. Just analyzing their physical signs and symptoms and not adressing the underlying issues will often worsen the problem. Sometimes it’s better to allow a person a day of sick leave to get their personal issues sorted out, than to send them back to work because their physical complaints are not severe enough to stay at home. However the main purpose of a Sick Leave Management program is of course to reduce the overall sickleave numbers for a company. This is why at Medwork, being a company doctor is not a one-man show.
Medwork as a team
At Medwork our physicians are part of a team of specialists that work together to achieve the best possible solution for the problems that an employee is facing. Our company doctors hold the position of a gateway to many other Occupational Health specialists and services. Occupational Psychologists, specialists in ergonomics or company wellness; all are ready to offer their expertise and experience whenever a company doctor deems it neccesary. And whenever a certain specialty that is not part of the Medwork team is needed, we will outsource the solution to this problem to one of the specialist organizations in our large network of business partners. It does not matter how complicated things get, you will still be talking to one and the same person; your Medwork account manager.