18 December 2019

During cold and flu season employees tend to get sick more often, but only 51% of all companies allow them to call in sick and to get better at home. These are the results of a survey conducted by Online Market Intelligence (OMI) upon request from Vedomosti. The survey covered 6,568 working Russians. 20.7% other employees allow sick workers to stay at home for three days without taking official sick leave. But it turns out that many bosses expect and even insist that sick employees keep on working, no matter whether they take sick leaves or not (20.5% employers).

So, 5.3% companies allow the workers not to take official sick leaves if they continue to work from homes. 2.6% others reported that even if they take sick leaves, they are expected to work from homes. And in 12.6% companies employees are supposed to show up at work no matter how they feel. About a quarter of those surveyed by OMI are working in companies with 500+ employees, with equal shares of males and females surveyed. 25% of surveyed workers live in Moscow, St Petersburg and cities with over 1 million inhabitants, with most employees (46%) in cities with population below 100,000.

According to a survey conducted by Mail.ru in 2016, employees mainly refuse to call in sick in order not to lose their earnings (37% of those surveyed). 22% didn’t want to waste time in hospitals doing paperwork. Nearly the same amount noted that they keep working anyway, but it is not convenient to do it at home so they keep on coming to office sick. 10% of respondents fear that the bosses would consider them lazy, and 5% are afraid of getting fired because of calling in sick.

Tatyana Nikolayenko, Head of Labour Law Practice, Khrenov & Partners, notes that the payments to sick workers depend on work experience with the company – with experience over 8 years the employee is entitled to 100% average salary for the previous two years (not exceeding the maximum obliged by law), 5 to 8 years – 80%, less than 5 years – 60%.

The full article may be viewed here (in Russian, subscription only).