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Billerica, Billerica Blog, Fraud, Kronos, LiarCard, Politics, Private Investigation, Sick Day Bounty Hunters, Sick Days, SpoofCard
Did you know that your employer has the right to track you down, observe your behavior and to fire you for calling in sick? Well, they do. Many go to the point of hiring private detectives to observe employees and report on their “sick day” behavior to employers. This includes a growing number of both private and public sector employers in Massachusetts:
“In 2009 four firefighters in Haverhill, Mass., were suspended after a private investigator, hired by the mayor, caught them attending hockey games and engaging in other blatantly non-sick-day activities.”
Kronos, a workforce productivity firm on Old Billerica Rd., Chelmsford, Mass., recently found that 57 percent of U.S. salaried employees take sick days when they’re not really sick — a nearly 20 percent increase from statistics gathered between 2006 and 2008. For those thinking that employers might get into trouble for such activity, think again:
You can read more on this subject in the article, “The Sick-Day Bounty Hunters“, by Eric Spitznagel under the Personal Finance tab within Yahoo! Finance. The paragraph I found most interesting and singularly most descriptive of today’s relationship between employer and employee was the following from Detective:
Speaking of hypocrisy, there are some businesses that take direct advantage of this common trait by design. For example, in the article recommended above, you will read about TelTech Systems, an internet tech company. For workers, they designed, sell and support a product called “SpoofCard”. This card allows people to program their cell phones to show any ten-digit origination telephone number of their choosing to those who call them or are called by them.
With this technology, you can call in sick while hunting with Sara Palin in Alaska, when you call in sick, and the number displayed on your boss’s telephone caller I.D. will by that of your home phone. The majority of users have the card to protect their privacy by showing false telephone information to uninvited callers or to recipients of one-time calls with whom no long-term relationship is desired. But, there is always that 5% – 10% of the population who will abuse even the most well intended technology for unethical or fraudulent purposes.
The same company also sells a product to companies called LiarCard. The purpose of this device is to detect lies via a voice analysis hidden to the caller outside of the company. The company who purchased this technology is then free to act on the results of the analysis and dispatch an investigator, or not, to confirm or deny the accuracy of the voice analysis.
TelTech justifies playing both ends against each other with the view that selling a service to one customer that is designed to entrap another is O.K.
He is certainly helping the private investigation industry:
I cannot help but think of the lost productivity expended by the players in this game of employee-employer “gotcha.
High School said:
Sounds like a truant officer’s duties to me. What kind of “day” do you use if you have sick children? With an increasing number of mom’s working, families more spread out — a rhetoric question – I wonder if the study included this time as qualified “sick” time. These are generally ridiculous Q/A’s where you are allowed only one “best” answer.
It seems that more and more companies are doing away with “sick” days, replacing with “personal time”. My personal experiences from decades of private sector corporations is that workers take “sick” time for doctors, dentists, surgeries, etc. On a side note, whether it is called sick or personal time — 99% of co-workers/mgt/sr. mgt come in even when they are sick.
--Rick MacDonald said:
Thank you for taking the time to comment. I appreciate your effort and your thoughts.
Some, in this age of financial stress, question whether truant officers are necessary positions in their town and are using other methodologies to track attendance compliance. However, this article is not about children taking the day off from their classes; it is about adults abusing sick leave/personal time off policies and, in some cases, defrauding their companies by collecting salary and benefits they are not entitled to. Personal time off (or PTO) as it is commonly called, combines vacation and sick time into a bank that most people are required to use or lose by the end of their fiscal year (some agencies, such as the federal government, do not operate on a calendar year). All employers expect their employees to plan their time off and to coordinate with the company to ensure proper staffing and coverage exists at all times.
Even with PTO banks, sick time off generally provides the company little time to arrange for coverage and staffing choices and could even lead to lost revenue. For instance, most standalone (not attached to a hospital) MRI companies provide only one technologist per shift. If, then, that technologist calls out sick an hour before opening; it is likely that appointments will have to be canceled resulting in support employees being paid for unproductive time spent juggling a once set and satisfactory schedule.
The larger point was those employees who feign long-term illness or injury sufficient to get on “disability” status, or those employees who abuse personal time off in a fraudulent manner.
Your rhetorical question: “What kind of “day” do you use if you have sick children?” is best answered by what plan did you formulate for such a situation prior to accepting a job that requires employees to be at their assigned workstations unless an absence can be planned? I am struck by how many people expect employers to consider the personal issues of their employees and how few people demand that employees demonstrate the same consideration for their employers. Everyone with children knows that they will be sick at some point; and yet, when that illness strikes, most people have no plan to deal with both the ill child and the needs of the employer who is, most likely, paying for the health insurance plan that will be used to pay for the child’s care.
My experience with the majority of workers is similar to yours; however, we all know that even small companies have a percentage of employees who have no qualms about abusing policies and their obligation to the employer who gave them the opportunity to work and provide for themself. Are some employers abusing employees? Of course, some do! Just as there will always be a percentage of bad employees; there will always be a percentage of bad employers.
The difference is that all employers offer work opportunities in exchange for a wage that one can accept (to meet permanent or temporary needs) or reject in hope of finding a better fit. Employees offer the employer a body to fill a vacancy and most of the time, companies fill those positions competitively; furthermore, the company uses competition as a means of inspiring the employees to continuously perform at a high level in order to keep that position.
Rarely does an individual employee offer personal or financial security simply by way of his employment and job performance. On the other hand, employers always offer a degree of personal or financial security so long as the employee conforms to company policy and expected levels of behavior, and so long as the employee is willing to work under the conditions dictated by the employer.
Your last comment is true to some extent, but I doubt that any enterprise has an employee base that is 99% reliable. Furthermore, coming to work sick is not in the interest of the employee, the employer, coworkers or those who interact personally with the sick. Let us take the most recent example of the teacher who had a productive cough, low-grade fever, general malaise and more in the way of symptoms, who chose to disregard her symptoms and report for work. It turned out that she was suffering from tuberculosis. The news report cites her putting 100 persons at risk, but the fact is that everyone who entered the doors of the building took on some degree of risk with every breath taken as they passed through her breathing zone following a cough or a sneeze. How often, during the winter season, do we hear about students diagnosed with meningitis? Therefore, coming to work sick is not a good idea; nor is it heroic. As a matter of public safety, it is imperative that employers and employees establish a level of trust that meets the needs of each. Those employees who abuse sick days, disability and unplanned personal time off periods provide only benefit to themselves as they risk the health and comfort or their coworkers and the willingness of employers to work with those who have legitimate issues.