The growing trend of 'sick leave' in Germany

Sunday 29 December 2024

Islamabad (UrduPoint News Today/ Pakistan Point News - 29th Dec, 2024 ) The increase in sick leave rates could be bad news for German companies. According to experts, the country's economy is already in decline and cannot currently bear the burden of such requests.

Private detective Markus Lentz and his agency are seeing a steady increase in the number of requests from companies that want to find out whether their employees are really sick and cannot work or if it is just an excuse.

"More and more companies do not want to bear this burden anymore," Lentz told AFP. He added that his Lentz Group receives 1,200 such requests a year, in which employers want to know the facts about their employees' illnesses, the number of these requests has almost doubled compared to a few years ago.

He says that if someone takes 30, 40 or even 100 days of sick leave a year, it becomes “unpleasant for the employer.”

From the car industry to fertilizer companies, the burden of sick leave on Europe’s largest economy is reaching record levels, and experts are concerned.

Some say that changes to sick-listing rules have made it easier for such fraudulent claims to be made.

However, experts also believe that workload and stress could be another reason.

Many agree that the trend is weighing on Germany at a time when almost every industry in the country is slowing down. “The effects of this trend are definitely having a serious impact on the economy,” Klaus Michelsen, chief economist at a German association of pharmaceutical companies, told AFP.

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The German economy suffered a 0.3% decline in 2023 due to people absent from work due to illness, according to the association.

According to figures from the Federal German Statistical Office, people working in Germany took an average of 15.1 days of sick leave last year, up from 11.1 days in 2021.

According to a report by TK, one of the health insurance companies in Germany, the average sick leave take-up rate among its insured people was more than 14% in the first nine months of the year, a new record.

Mercedes-Benz CEO Ola Kallenius lamented the problem, saying, “The rate of sick leave taken in Germany is twice as high as in other European countries.”

Elon Musk’s electric carmaker Tesla has taken a slightly different approach. Employees at the company who claim sick leave are personally sent a letter from the company to confirm.

Critics say the system of getting a doctor’s permission to take sick leave over the phone in case of a minor illness, which was introduced during the Covid pandemic, should be ended because the system has become increasingly abused.

Lentz believes that people are taking long sick leave to do their own work or work elsewhere.

He gave the example of a man who was taking sick leave to help his wife with her business. He also said that many people use the leave to renovate their properties.

Although Germany Hiring a detective can be an expensive process, but according to Lentz, employers are now so desperate that they want to get to the bottom of the matter and are not afraid to spend money on it.

However, not everyone is convinced that the growing problem of sick leave is actually due to people using the system illegally.

Some say that a new system, under which doctors automatically send sick notes to patients' insurance companies, is the real cause of the problem.

However, there is another aspect to consider.

The WSI Institute, part of the Hans Böckler Foundation, which is affiliated with German trade unions, believes that accusing workers of false sick leave is a dangerous shortcut. "They are overlooking the real reasons," they said. "Work pressure, a steady increase in respiratory diseases and other underlying problems are the real reasons."

RB/SH (AFP)