Call the doctor very quick: Sick leaves spike in December

Bosses raise their eyebrows at the 20.2% surge.

According to a recent survey by JobsCentral, employers usually observe a surge in the number of reported sick leaves in December (20.2 per cent), followed by February (13.1 per cent). January (12.1%) and June (11.7 per cent) are also popular months for calling in sick as well.

Here's more from JobsCentral:

When asked to describe their current job satisfaction, only a marginally larger proportion of workers (50.7 per cent) who took bogus sick leave voiced discontentment with their jobs.

This suggests that employees who feign illness to skip work may not necessarily be unhappy with their jobs.

Headaches/giddiness (41.5 per cent), diarrhea/food poisoning (18.3 per cent) and stomach cramps (10.7 per cent) are the three most common excuses used by healthy workers who took sick leave.

Experienced workers are less likely to feign illnesses than their less experienced colleagues. 19.8 per cent of workers with 0 to 4 years of work experience confessed to faking their medical leave, compared to those with 10 or more years of experience (13.1 per cent).

While across all salary ranges, the percentages of workers that will take bogus sick leave is around the 20 per cent mark, only 14.2 per cent workers that earn over S$5,000 would do so.