Absenteeism: Loving the Job You're With

Points for loyalty

Work, for most people, is a sadly necessary evil. We drag ourselves to the office like Shakespeare’s reluctant schoolboy, our offices looming ominously in our minds like today’s equivalent of Blake’s dark, Satanic mills. Which explains why we love weekends- and sick days.

Sometimes the weekend is just not enough to salve our souls. So we need a day off work to sit in the park, lie in bed, or just skive for the sheer rebellious pleasure of it. But the FT reports that over the past year, people have been taking fewer such liberties. Attendance is up, and for good reason.

Absence from the office is always politically risky: rivals find it easier to plunge the knife in you’re back when your away. The fact that you’re indispensable is also more obvious, and micromanaging bosses find themselves bereft without someone to torment, and so may take it out on you.

In a recession, with redundancies happening by the thousands, the risk of skiving becomes even higher. Thus the decline in sick days. It’s a sad confirmation that human beings, despite our wish to believe the contrary, are actually quite effectively motivated by the fear of negative consequences.

The report also reveals that women skive more than men, older workers are more dependable, and that despite their fatter pensions, civil service workers are the skivers-in-chief of the economy. Who would have thought?