Not really. They simply have an expiration date. And how long should you carry sick days for?
To me, sick days are not paid time off, but kinda like ‘unable to work’ days. They are ‘just in case’ days off. You don’t ‘earn’ a sick day like you would ‘earn’ a vacation day; they aren’t rewards for your diligent efforts.
A question: when does that sick day accrue? First of the month or last day? In the middle? Many places I’ve worked you could use up days not accrued yet (up to like three or four) and if you left the company before you truly accrued them, it would come out of your final paycheck.
And in this case it makes sense to allow that. What if you are sick for three days in February? Do you just not get paid for a day (or two) that you miss? Doesn’t seem fair.
I don’t get sick days now, but I’ve worked at two places where I did, and both granted all of them at 1/1. The first place gave 5 sick days per year, allowing rollover, and the second gave 10 per year, no rollover. In both situations, I always had enough to cover the 5 day short term disability waiting period (all companies I’ve worked for have had the same 5 day waiting period, but maybe that’s just a US thing since our leave policies are generally terrible from the get go).
I don’t recall how mid-year hiring got prorated for sick time.
I prefer having dedicated sick time vs a larger bank, even though I don’t get sick that often. It feels more equitable for people with chronic conditions, and I feel less guilty about taking it.
Side note: we had a custodian in our school system who was employed pretty much his entire adult life. Took maybe 5 sick days in his 35 year career. Union rules said how many ever sick days got carried over with no expiration.
When he retired, he was able to take 14 full months “off” at full pay due to his sick days. So, he stopped working in November of one year and received full pay until the end of December the following year. At that time he fully retired.
Now this is an extreme case, granted.
But to me sick days can be like time outs in a football game. You get three per half. They are there if you need/want them. However, if you don’t use them, they are gone.
Best thing to do is just have a big time off bag (PTO) that accrues (not ‘is earned’) from time to time and the employees uses them when they want/need and subject to management approval in certain circumstances.
I’m a ‘never take sick days’ person. Shoot, I came into work the afternoon I had surgery years ago, hopped up on morphine.
These days, if I worked in an office I would take the odd sick day because I think everyone realizes walking around an office carrying something transmissable isn’t a real good social building activity. But back then I had no realization anyone would care. And now I WFH, so doesn’t matter. Worst case once in a while I’ll crash for an hour or two mid day.
But then again, I’m horrified that back in the 80’s I smoked at my desk when I was on a coop workterm in school…in a cube setting where I now realize I was likely the only one smoking. I have few regrets, but that’s one and I can’t apologize for it.. I’m sure people went home smelling like smoke after working near me. My gawd, retroactive decades-old embarrassement.
And this is the point I’m making by saying that there’s a “lost benefit”. If I could take 3 days off in Dec (a benefit) but 0 days in Jan (no benefit), that’s a lost benefit in my view.
If there is a z > 0 days of carry over, then it would be a decrease of a benefit, which isn’t necessarily good, but less bad that a completely losing it.
In both cases, you run the risk of someone being “sick” in December so as not to lose any benefits they’ve accrued.
@SpaceLobster - I’ve also seen some companies where the “sick leave” policy is that the employee gets x days at the start of employment, can accrue additional days to a max of y days, and z days are carried over (x<=z<=y) where z will increase over the tenure of the employee (e.g., increasing 1 day for every 3 years of continuous employment).