Some 350,000 British employees are estimated to have called in sick to work on 'Sickie Monday' (the first Monday in February), costing businesses around £30 million in lost revenue.
According to research by the Employment Law Advisory Service (ELAS), 25% of employers now accept emails or text messages from staff to say they are ill, instead of the traditional phone call, making it easier for employees to fake it.
ELAS’s Peter Mooney said: “The traditional phone call was always a way for bosses to decipher whether staff members were bluffing or genuinely ill.
“But now, as our research shows, many employers are dispensing with it, which leads me to think that the system will be open to more abuse than ever”.