This was orginally published as part of an article on callcentrehelper.com
Is an employee faking illness?
The bottom line is that it doesn’t matter.
Humans innately want to feel a sense of equity in our social interactions[1]. This means that if we feel that the absence isn’t legitimate, we might have a tendency to want to prove or disprove this view, rather than dealing with the objective impact of the absence (i.e. that we have one fewer person available for work).
Instead of focusing on the subjective validity of the reason for the absence, trusting and then applying your HR processes to understand what you can do to support a return to work is a more useful, pragmatic and legally defensible position to take.
Those HR processes are, hopefully, rooted in the genuine care and wellbeing of your people, and will ensure that consistent investigatory steps are taken for all absences.
This doesn’t mean that the outcomes, support offered and, if necessary, sanctions will be the same for all individual cases. But it does mean that we can avoid bringing some of our own biases into the decision-making process.
[1] Tabibnia, G., Satpute, A. B., & Lieberman, M. D. (2008). The sunny side of fairness: preference for fairness activates reward circuitry (and disregarding unfairness activates self-control circuitry). Psychological Science, 19(4), 339–347. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02091.x
