John Linton .......pity there remain around 18 sleeps of things to do before that time.
I remember now why I have so irregularly taken a holiday over the past 20 or so years - I'd book them and then cancel them a week or so before I was due to go as there was seldom a year when things were running smoothly enough for me to believe I could spare the time. I also remember one or two holidays I did take that I ruined for my traveling companion(s) by constantly calling back to Australia and then worrying about what I heard or thought I had heard. This time, as with last year and the year before, I have no choice as I'm so physically and mentally tired that actually attempting to continue to work is not an option - even I notice I'm doing too many things badly at the moment.
How pathetic and self indulgent you may now be thinking - and who could blame you? There is a point to that particularly 'poor me' opening which is just how hard and consistently is it to expect anyone, in any position, to work in this period of commercial endeavour where most 'commentary' is on "quality of life in the workplace". Of course such commentary on 'quality of life' is almost always made by people who, as far as I can see, have never worked very hard, if at all, in any part of their life. I'm sure there are exceptions but I'm not in a forgiving mood at the moment.
I used to say to people who asked me what I did to relax or what 'hobbies' I had that "a person who needs a hobby needs a different career" - by which I meant of course, if you don't enjoy the work you do (or at least get more satisfaction/reward from) more than anything else you could do with that time, then you needed to change your career. Of course all I got for my trouble in pointing out that jewel of advice was blank or self satisfied pitying looks at what an idiot I was. Everyone to their particular view I suppose.
This melange of incoherent thought crossed my mind as I once again pondered on why so many Australians take 'sickies' and why that 'right' has been enshrined in Australian work practices. I particularly wondered why so many young males seem to suffer so greatly from one day maladies which don't allow them to attend their work place but don't stop them playing pool or going to the pub or just hanging out with their friends who have no job to go to. Clearly they aren't either needed by their employer nor are they more interested in their job than they are in doing something else when they are needed to work.
Long ago the 'long weekend sickie' (where a person calls in sick early on Friday morning before heading off for a long weekend with their mates) and the 'Monday hangover sickie' (where a person has such a great weekend they drink and stay up to excess) have been identified by employers as accounting for 70% of all 'short term medical problems' for employees. So much so that no employer ever believes that ANY employee is ever actually sick on Mondays or Fridays and just regards people who take those days off as lacking in ethics.
Is this too jaundiced a way of looking at 'sickies'?
My mother never got sick. My wife (and my children's mother) never gets sick. Why would that be as they seem to have the same number of colds and 'flu' and all of the other minor ailments that afflict the human race over the years? The answer, obviously, is that they have too much to do (for other people) to ever let any physical discomfort get in the way of them discharging their obligations to their family and their other commitments.
So are all 'sickie takers' cynically unethical bludgers? Who knows and, apart from the people they work with who have to do their work while the 'sickie taker' is skiving off with his mates, who cares?
No employer has found a way of eliminating the 'sickie taking' problem as far as I know. Most competent employers deal with it by hiring people who will be more interested in progressing their career than by damaging their prospects by Friday and Monday 'sickies'. As companies like Exetel operate in their early years there are no such problems as the few people in the company share a dedication and an interest in keeping the company 'alive' and take so much personal responsibility for all aspects of customer happiness that the problem is to get them to cut down on their working hours.
It's clearly not possible to ignore the need to ensure that employees who are genuinely unwell or unfit aren't financially disadvantaged when they need to undergo medical or hospital treatment that includes the need not to go to work - we do live in a civilised commercial society.
But that means that the healthy and diligent are 'punished' by our nanny state regulations in that the fact that they choose to work every day of the week and deal with minor discomforts with over the counter pharmaceuticals rather than getting their mummy or their partner to call someone at the office and say they are sick and won't be in today. This shouldn't be the case. It's actually grossly unfair and therefore it shouldn't exist in commercial practice.
In the 'bad old days' I know of companies that used to deal with this insidious disruption by reducing any annual increase by a percentage dependent on the number of 'sickies' taken by an employee. I doubt that it ever achieved anything except losing valuable employees over the next 12 month period or made them less valuable because of discontent.
So, subject to legal advice, and general 'directorial' agreement, we will make a change to our own work practices by giving our employees who don't take 'sickies' a financial reward equivalent to 1.5 times the value of the 'sick days' they didn't take in each financial year. It seems only fair, at least to me, that people who choose to work on the 'public holidays' awarded by the nanny state (mandated sick leave) should be paid for the extra time they 'volunteer' to put in.
We will probably also introduce a 'profit sharing scheme' in this financial year; we are in the final stages of getting the documentation from the accountants. One of the eligibility criteria will be 'full attendance' or however that turns out to be worded.
My expectation of introducing such changes in to Exetel is that they will prevent a problem that has cursed Australian companies for decades ever developing in our company as it gets larger.