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https://www.cbc.ca/radio/whitecoat/the-high-cost-of-sick-notes-1.7093843
I think that guy at the end has the right idea. If the employer wants proof of illness they should be required to pay for it. During the height of COVID in Sask, an group of healthcare providers published a generic note that said something like “it’s a pandemic, we don’t have time to create individual notes so this is our official recommendation that your employee stay home if they don’t feel well”. My last employer, we wouldn’t normally ask for a note, unless we noticed an issue or pattern(things like calling out monthly, or consistently calling out the first/last day of their week, etc.). Usually that involved a referral to a third party claim management company with the requirement that they consult with a doctor who determines if they’re fit for work, require accommodations, or are simply unfit to work. We should also expand protections relating to sick time to other emergencies like loss of childcare, failure of an essential appliance, etc..
Most notes even before COVID were prewritten and just had your name and a generic "please excuse so and so due to illness" so in effect useless to convey any info other than you wasted two people's times rather than staying home getting better.
In most companies I've worked for the sick note requirement was 100% due to a few bad actors. We had to ask for one everytime because they wanted to avoid potential lawsuits if we only asked due to a pattern. 99% of people were doing the right thing and this policy just inconvenienced them. Part of the issue is employers making rules based on the 1% of bad faith situations. The amount of time management and HR spent running after doctors notes would have easily covered the cost of that 1% of shitty employees if notes weren't required.
Yea, the only time I ever asked someone to get a note was when I needed to get HR to do an ADA accommodation or FMLA or something for someone. As far as we were concerned otherwise an absence is an absence and there was a point system in place. As long as you stayed below the threshold you were fine.
Employers should be required to drink spit-water from employees that are required to work if they cannot produce a doctor's note.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
"This is not the role of the health system, to police employee attendance," she told White Coat, Black Art's Dr. Brian Goldman.
Hayley Bueckert-Dick, who lives in Roland, Man., remembers the trouble it took to get a doctor's sick note in 2017 when she had a minor illness while working a minimum-wage job at a fast food restaurant.
Badi Bloodworth, a nurse practitioner who works at a Winnipeg walk-in clinic, says low-income workers are more likely to need a sick note than those in higher-paying office jobs.
Dingwell said this could be seen in places like crowded factories, where one person with gastroenteritis could spread it to half the workforce, rendering them unable to come to work.
He advises companies to do things like train employees — including supervisors and managers when necessary — to fill in the most critical tasks in the event of a colleague's short-term absence.
Dr. Gregory Sawisky, a physician in Ponoka, Alta., takes a different tack whenever a patient requests a sick note: he sends an invoice to their employer.
The original article contains 966 words, the summary contains 174 words. Saved 82%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
