Sick Days Rewards

We recently discussed the idea of changing your sick day policy to be more rewarding for the employee, rather than using a "use it or lose it" strategy. That type of strategy punishes employees for not being sick by taking away time that they earned for their work, and this can harm employee satisfaction.

However, to be fair, most employees won't think about this much during their time with your organization. Yet that's not the only way that changing your sick day policy can improve satisfaction. All of this depends on which policy changes you make, but some potential benefits include: Sick days that turn into vacation days or personal days can give employees more time with their family, creating a better work/life balance.

This plays an important role in satisfaction. Sick days that turn into some type of financial incentive are providing employees with more income for the time they spend there, or act as a bigger bonus, forced savings account, or more for the employee. You've already set your budget aside for the employee, and rewarding them with the sick days they've earned can clearly have some positive benefits for your employee satisfaction.

But it's not just the employees that benefit. Companies want the employees to be in the office. Presumably, if the employee is doing their job, each employee is providing the company with X amount of ROI.

Every time they're not in the office, they lose that revenue. With the current system most companies already have in place, employees are essentially being pushed to take unnecessary sick days simply because the company will take them away otherwise. Improper use of sick days is a serious problem.

With a new system that rewards employees for sick days, fewer employees will be tempted to abuse the system, knowing that there are rewards for them if they keep their sick days intact. That means more production for your company, and possibly less overtime for workers that need to cover the slack. Overall, changing your sick day policy to reward employees can actually be better for your company's long term outlook.

Every company is different. Some companies may already have this type of sick day policy in place, while others may not benefit as much financially from changing sick days, or the employees have other reasons not to use sick days. Still, when it comes to employee satisfaction, these types of little changes can make a bid difference, so this method is something to consider if you're hoping to boost your company's satisfaction scores.