Nearly one in five Singapore workers (18.3%) said they have feigned illness to get medical leave. Among them, almost half (49.1%) revealed that they would skip work three or more times a year.
The majority of employers of employers (82.7%) rely on medical certificates to verify sickness claims, while only 12.3% said they would call the employee to check. Five per cent would go to the extent of asking a co-worker to check on the employee.
The top reason for workers avoiding work was because they just didn’t feel like working (42%), followed by having plans outside work (30.7%). Some 7.6% of workers did so because they overslept, while 7.3% felt burnt out in their jobs.
Employers usually observe a surge in the number of reported sick leave in December (20.2%), followed by February (13.1%). January (12.1%) and June (11.7%) are also popular months for calling in sick as well.
However, when asked to describe their current job satisfaction, only a marginally larger proportion of workers (50.7%) 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.
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