Just ran across an interesting chart that shows the number of guaranteed sick and leave days in different countries (sick days are like you have a cold, leave days are like you have cancer).
This relates to my post about the role of companies in the health of their employees (and the country as a whole). The sick leave entry suggests that the government mandate some number of days. I’ll avoid that question for politics sake, but I do generally think that this speaks to the misaligned incentives in health in this country. As a sick person I’m encouraged to go to work because otherwise I won’t be paid. When I go I am spreading that sickness to all the other folks in the office, ultimately creating a larger loss in productivity than if I had just stayed home for the day (not to mention I’m less likely to get better than having rested).
Yup, misaligned incentives seems to be where it’s at. Excited to speak to David Lee, one of GE’s health economist about some of this stuff.
“As a sick person I’m encouraged to go to work because otherwise I won’t be paid”…I don’t think this is the main factor for most professional and management employees…it’s more that they have so much going on that they fear dropped balls if they’re out for a couple of days.
That’s a good point … Hrm … How can companies help with this?
I think it’s also a cyclical thing. If a country like Luxembourg has sick/leave embedded so deeply at an institutional level, I believe it creates a wider circle of understanding of the importance of health. So ‘dropped balls’ are less likely to get everyone riled up when it can be attributed to illness. Whereas, in North America, there’s an expectation that you should take your work home with you, and that being out of the office to get well is not a valid excuse.
That’s a good point Garrett, there is a deeper cultural issue here that may need to be addressed. Even so, you could stay home and work from there (and not get others sick).
[...] other day we had an hour call with David Lee, one of GE’s health economists (who we mentioned the other day). Anyway, I have about six pages of notes I need to parse and start posting, but this morning I was [...]
The chart indicates “mandated” sick & leave days… I assume that this means “government-mandated” or perhaps, more specifically, “federal-government-mandated”. I’d be interested to see actual sick & leave days for different companies/corporations. My experience (clearly anecdotal in nature) is that, in general, US companies have policies that include sick & leave days.
It sounds like a question of whether we need/prefer government regulation of this issue as opposed to depending on corporate competition for workers (by way of benefits) or corporate goodwill.
That’s a super good point Cedric, and I should have pointed it out. Would be interesting to compare average sick days offered by companies in the US with the rest of the chart.