How to keep people from calling in sick

[Pervarotti]

At work I have been covering for a person on vacation.  She schedules our construction crews to maintenance type jobs/service calls to a bunch of apartment complexes.   I schedule these fuckers after confirming with the tenants, and put everything on a master calendar.

Today 3 of 15 people called in sick, its  major pain because I have to find people to go to their jobs.

I don't believe they're all sick, that would be 20% sick rate.     they get paid $15-$25 an hour and have no immediate supervision they just drive around fixing stuff. 

How can i get them to stop calling in sick?

[Ogre]

You keep them happy.


These guys are paid hourly, they lose money by not going to work. Yet, they're blowing in sick because they don't want to go to work. They're not happy, they don't like their jobs, and they'd rather lose money than show up to work. It's a failure in management.

A direct supervisor will help. Someone who is responsible for making sure that they have everything that they need to work effectively and successfully, and to interface with the business on their behalf, as well as to hold them accountable.

[Pervarotti]

Thanks Ogre, I think their pay rate is fine but maybe they need more feedback and supervision like you mentioned. 

[MUFDVR]

It's because they are lazy, unethical, selfish fucks.  Fire them and find someone else who isn't lazy, unethical and selfish.  It's not like they are making minimum wage.

It's not a failure in management, not even close. They only way it could be a failure in management is because they likely hired the wrong people.  The world is full of shitty people like this these days, particularly in the lower skilled fields.

If you agree to do something, you do it if you are person with integrity.  If you don't like your job, find another instead of screwing other people over and not keeping your word.   If they keep it up, the threat of being homeless and broke can be a good motivator to change lazy, unethical and selfish behavior.

[MUFDVR]

Also, because the economy is booming so hard right now, they likely know they can find another job pretty easily.  That's likely a factor too.  Once the next recession hits, it's the idiots like that who are the first to hit the unemployment lines. 

[Ogre]

I bet you're a fucking joy to work for... LOL

People generally want to do good work. Sometimes you get a shitty employee, but if this is something that is a problem across the board, it's not the employees.

You sound like one of those people who says all women/men are bad because they've had a string of bad relationships... There's one thing all of those relationships have in common.

For the record, my department has an average tenure of 6 years, and next to zero turnover, with insanely good customer satisfaction and performance metrics, yet they're all underpaid and overworked because we're understaffed. So I'll stake that record against your anti-labor attitude any day. Your way is expensive and puts out a shitty product.

[MUFDVR]

Ogre, why are you defending piece of shit employees who blow off work, lie and cost the company money?  Why would you blame it on management when she gave no data to indicate management has don't anything to suggest that?   Where did you earn your business degree at?  How much management experience do you have? Does 20% indicate a problem "across the board" or more likely shitty employees?

Just because you always get fucked over by management doesn't mean all management is fucked and to blame. 

And this has nothing to do with the department you work in.  At all. Totally irrelevant. Anecdotal evidence, nothing more.  A fool would make that argument and try to apply it there.  Sophomore year research methods/stats class  for any business degree would teach you that.

[Ogre]

The department that I run.


The data I have is that they're unsupervised, and that they're blowing off enough that it's seen as a problem across the board, and not with some individuals.

I would absolutely say that if 20% of the employees are doing that there's a problem with their management. Probably some need to be fired, likely some or most can be recovered, but with no supervision they're just doing whatever the fuck they want to do. The company doesn't give a fuck about them, and so they give 0 fucks about the company. You seem to think that loyalty is automatic, it is not, it is earned by valuing your human assets.

Additionally, we're not talking about general office help or unskilled labor here, we're talking about skilled tradesmen. I've worked in and around that environment for 25 years, in at least a supervisory role for 15 of those years, as a skilled tradesman for the other 10, at my current employer for 8 years.

They've got a team of highly skilled employees that presumably do good work (since quality isn't the complaint). It takes a lot of time to fill highly skilled positions, and lots of time to bring new employees up to speed with the requisite institutional knowledge. It is, in fact, very expensive to replace skilled workers. It makes sense to correct behavior rather than throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

"Fire all of them" isn't just ill advised, it's outright stupid kneejerk advice. It completely ignores the reasons why these people are doing what they do, and completely ignores the fact that they're currently unsupervised. The right advice is to properly manage them, keep the valuable skills and knowledge, and make an informed decision to fire the ones who don't get it.

For the record, employee acquisition and retention is something that I'm trained in at least yearly to keep with the current trends in IT, where I have to maintain a highly skilled and engaged workforce. It's not something that I'm unfamiliar with, and I'm way above industry average in all of my metrics because of that.

I've seen, first hand, what kind of team the "fire 'em all" style of management gets, and it's a miserable work environment with low morale and unproductive people who do shit work. Nobody who's worth a damn stays around, people who can perform don't. I've heard these idiots lamenting the fact that everyone is lazy and disloyal as their companies struggled and/or underperformed. There's one thing all of those 'lazy' employees had in common...

[MUFDVR]

Ogre, I never said "fire em all", did I?  I said fire the ones who lie and cost the company money and have a shitty work ethic.  People who lie and have a shitty work ethic should be fired.  Period.  The idea that this is some fault of management is absurd, particularly when they aren't even being supervised.  If you gave that answer in any class I ever taught/had, the students would laugh are you.   Not kidding.

Heidi, don't listen to this Ogre's touchy feely crap.  If you were hiring architects or accountants or some other job that's difficult to replace, important to the core process of the firm and worth the investment of time, then my advice would be very different.  This level of employees aren't worth it, they can be replaced faster than a trash can liner.  These fools are costing your company money.  It's a common problem with semiskilled blue collar types, they'd rather lay out hungover on a monday than dragass to work.  It's par for the course.

I assume that as they are lower level employees who make that wage means that the job doesn't any type of degree or education.  For that pay, they should be pretty easy to replace. Fire them and spend the time on the hiring process to try and get good employees for the next good around.

[Silver Mercenary]

If I may just chime in..IT professionals have much better work ethic than contractors. so comparing the two is like comparing apples to orangutans..

I occassionaly call/hire contractors, electricians, plumbers, etc..their professionalism, timeliness, punctuality is shit. Hired an electrician 2 weeks ago, blew me off 2x..on the 3rd reschedule he texts me at the time he's supposed to be here.."I'll be there in a few hrs"

I called a childhood friend who is now a plumber to come by for an estimate, he never showed up and just stopped responding to my calls and texts

Ogre, there is no amount of mgmt creating an exciting work environment or paying better that will fix a shitty employees

Most contractors..like 80%+ are really disconnected with work ethic, sense of urgency or punctuality..its just in their DNA, and the industry attracts employees of that character.

How do you get people not to call in sick? is like asking "How do i get a hooker to stop giving blowjobs?"

Its partially the lackadaisical industry norm vs good workers who want to distance and distinguish themselves from that stereotype.

find the good workers and treat them well, and let them lead the way..show them all the beauty they posses inside..also give them a sense of pride

[Ogre]

For the record, the bottom tier in my team makes $17 an hour. They're low-skilled workers, even though they're IT workers.

I spent years supervising teams of contractors doing everything from electrical, to iron work, to structured cabling. I still manage outsourced people who do that work. These are skilled tradesmen, not IT professionals.


The idea that skilled tradesmen are easy to fill positions is ignorant. Your plumber doesn't bill $120 an hour because there's a glut of plumbers. The skilled trades are becoming more and more difficult to staff. It's much easier to find an accountant than it is to find an electrician, and they get paid less money most of the time. Skilled trades are getting more expensive and harder to hire... but Muff has a degree, so he must know more than people with actual experience.


Ivory towers... etc.

[MUFDVR]

Ogre, do "skilled tradesmen" get paid $15/hr?  Is that the type of people Heidi is working with?  Do "skilled tradesmen" take care of maintenance issues?  WTF does $120/hr plumbers have to do with anything Heidi is talking about?

The people she is talking about aren't skilled and can be replaced very, very easily..

Maybe if you had gone to college and had even a minimal education, you would have learned how to reason and debate...Maybe...You aren't nearly as smart as you think you are and an education would have taught you to respect education instead of trying limply to make fun of it...

And do you actually think people with degrees have no experience?  Dude, get the blue collar chip off your shoulder..

[Ogre]

College education is absolutely a joke. It's an extremely outdated concept, having physical centers of knowledge. I can have any knowledge in the world in an instant, without having to pay a fortune for it, and without trusting some random guy who gives zero fucks about my future to give it to me.

Your education is definitely meaningless, and any college education in today's world is outdated by the time it's put to use, especially in any meaningful career that won't be automated in the next 30 years.

BTW, maybe the problem is that they're not paying enough... Yes, maintenance requires skilled tradesmen, especially in California. I know we pay our maintenance people MUCH more than that in California... and that it's a huge PITA to hire people for maintenance positions. You're out of your depth book boy.

[MUFDVR]

Only the uneducated look down on education because they don't understand it.  And your view on it is so absurd and out of touch with reality that it proves how little you know.  Yep, doctors, lawyers, engineers, architects, teachers, nurses, etc. don't need college, they can all just learn that shit on their own, right?  Surely, that would be great for society. 

Dude, the irony is so thick here but you aren't smart enough to see it.

Perhaps, it's your fault you weren't smart enough to see the value of going to college and I bet you'd be making a lot more money if you had, and that's why you have always been bitter about it.  Don't take it out on other people, particularly when you have no idea what you are talking about. 

[Ogre]

I make plenty of money, more than the vast majority of people my age in my industry, including those with degrees. I've been at the top of my game my entire career. I'm not bitter at all. I've missed nothing. I was right about the value of a university education. I've done it all without one, and I've been wildly successful. I've worked in engineering positions at startups, and in Fortune 500s. I've been in charge of 9 digit projects that constitute the very core of our communications infrastructure.

I'm a respected expert in my field among my peers, and I didn't have to pay off a mountain of debt to do it. In fact, while some of my colleagues spent 4 or 8 years studying and making debt, I EARNED between $200,000-$350,000, and I was hiring and/or leading those people when they got out of school. These people ask ME for advice.


I'm right about the University model being outdated. It's completely unnecessary and only serves to puff up arrogant pompous assholes like yourself who justify their existence and self-worth with their imagined superiority. The fact that you assume that self-education is the only alternative speaks to your arrogance and lack of imagination. You're a dinosaur.