I work for a large corporation. This week my boss made it very clear to our team that we must supply a medical certificate for any time off work, even if it is only one day. I suspect that someone in my team might have had "one too many sickies" or was pretending to be sick to get off work, which has made the company clamp down on this.
I am not one to capriciously take a random "sickie" off work when I don't feel like coming in and haven't used any of my sick leave as of yet. I don't condone this "chuck a sickie" mentality and understand the company's intentions to protect itself. However, I feel this policy may come back to bite them in the back side.
When an employee genuinely gets sick and needs a day off work they will now need to spend half a day at the doctor's getting a certificate. Therefore, they are more inclined to ask for two or even three days off work "to make it worthwhile". Knowing how most doctors err on the side of caution and how highly contagious certain infections and flues can be at this time of the year, they will invariably get these extra days off. This can end up costing the company more money and lost hours.
I feel that my old job had the right balance. You were only required to supply a medical certificate if you took more than one consecutive day off work in a week, more than six days per year, or there was a pattern of unusual leave for so-called 'medical reasons'(abusing the system).
What are your thoughts on the one day off medical certificate policy?
Yeah someone is doing a dodgy and milking their sickies.
We only need certificates if the sick day is after/before a weekend, so people don't take long weekends whenever they want.
Check your contract/EBA. It will say how many days without a certificate you can take.
If not, contact Fair Work.