There are few things more annoying than sitting next to a coworker who is continually coughing, sneezing and complaining about how badly they feel. If you are like most people, you might think to yourself “why didn’t they just stay home? That’s what I would do.” According to a recent study by Monster.com, the odds are that you wouldn’t stay at home to recuperate. You would instead be part of the 71 percent of workers who go to work even when they are ill. Of the 29 percent that do stay home, two-thirds spend the time away from the office working, not recuperating.
As a business owner, are you willing to pay your employees to stay home and recuperate when they are sick? This is precisely the question that is being posed around the country at the city, state and national levels regarding paid sick leave. As the current battle in New York City over this issue indicates, it is a highly contentious issue where neither said is inclined to compromise.
How does your company compare?
Paid sick leave “provides all or part of an employee’s earnings if the employee is unable to work because of a non-work-related illness or injury.” It is typically offered on a per-year basis expressed in days.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ National Compensation Survey, which provides comprehensive measures of occupational wages, employment cost trends and benefit incidence, 62 percent of private sector workers and 89 percent of state and municipal workers receive paid sick leave as a benefit related to their employment. For private industry, paid sick leave is available to:
- 74 percent of full-time workers vs. 26 percent of part-time workers
- 71 percent of unionized workers vs. 61 percent of non-union workers
- 53 percent of workers at companies with less than 100 workers vs. 67 percent of workers at companies with between 100 and 500 workers vs. 89 percent of workers at companies with more than 500 workers
- 86 percent of workers whose earnings are within the top 10 percent for their industry vs. 19 percent of workers whose earnings are within the bottom 10 percent for their industry
- 54 percent of workers at manufacturing companies vs. 64 percent of workers at service industry companies
As the data indicates, there are significant differences depending on the size, nature, type and industry of employment. A high-paid, full-time, unionized worker at a large service company is most likely to have paid sick leave as a benefit. A part-time, low-paid, non-unionized worker at a small manufacturing company is least likely to have paid sick leave as a benefit.
Since 2008, the BLS calculates the percentage of paid sick leave access based on whether or not the worker has access to the benefit and regardless of whether or not they use it. Prior to this change, workers where only considered to “have access” to the benefit if the employer incurred a cost related to the benefit. Comparing the same data set using both definitions yields only a small change. One conclusion that can be drawn from this is that when workers are offered paid sick leave, they will use it.
How much does it cost to offer paid sick leave?
This is one area where there is no clear answer. Advocates of paid leave legislation indicate that it would affect a small number of workers and the increase in overall payroll costs would be minimal.
Detractors indicate that the costs would be significant – especially at a time when businesses are still struggling with a lackluster economy – and would affect a large number of workers. The paid sick leave debate certainly reflects the observation popularized by Mark Twain: “‘there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
The answer of course is somewhere in the middle and depends on the requirements of the legislation. In New York City, the proposed bill would require companies to provide employees , not independent contractors, with 72 hours of sick leave per year for companies with more than 20 employees. Companies with less than 20 employees would have to offer 40 hours per year. In this case the sick leave could be used for “an employee’s own mental or physical illness or for attending to the illness of a spouse, child, parent, grandparent or domestic partner.”
According to the latest BLS report on employee compensation which was published in June 2010, the average worker cost per hour to private sector employers was $27.64. Benefits were responsible for $8.11 with paid sick leave responsible for $0.23 of the total hourly cost or 0.8 percent.
Go to the article: Is Paid Sick Leave a Good Idea?
