[giobox]

I've seen some companies in the UK operate what they call a "duvet day" policy. It's basically just two floating holidays a year you can choose to use at any time, doesn't require explanation and doesn't count as a sick day. I personally haven't worked somewhere with such a policy, but know some people who do, using it largely as a "sanity day" as you describe. They really seem to appreciate it. I'm in no way trying to demean or imply mental illness isn't real and not deserving of 'real' sick days, but it's nice to have a range of options.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duvet_day

[sethjgore]

Correct me if I'm wrong, I think that's called a personal day here in the states. They usually give you two a year too, along with sick days.

Though I do agree, that there's stigma towards taking it for personal sanity, mind healing.

[malnourish]

Are sick days still a thing?

At my job we get PTO and holidays (floating depending on the year), but no specific sick days.

Apologies for any naivete.

[praneshp]

CA has a sick leave regulation: https://squareup.com/townsquare/californias-new-paid-sick-le...

When I was at Yahoo, we had unlimited sick days (and my manager aggressively enforced that), but after this law passed they asked us to mark any sick days we took off to comply (still unlimited, but somewhat tracked).

[sbaoufbasfub]

I think sick days are generally a good idea as they encourage people that are sick not to come in, thus helping stem epidemics. If they're regular time off, people come in sick to save them up.

You might try to make a distinction between contagious and non-contagious diseases, but it'd probably be unwise as often people don't know if they are contagious or not, and anyway encouraging healing isn't a terrible idea even if they aren't.

That said, you shouldn't be cheap on the vacation days either.

[sobani]

As someone from Holland I read the comment from malnourish in the opposite way.

Why limit the amount of days your allowed to be sick? What happens if you are sick for more days than what your contract allows?

I would think that a finite amount of sick days will have the opposite effect of what you are describing. People will come to work even when they're sick, just in case they get even more sick later in the year. Except for the end of December of course, can let those unused sick days go to waste!

[dragonwriter]

> Why limit the amount of days your allowed to be sick?

The number of days you are allowed to be sick is not limited; the number of days of paid leave to deal with being sick is limited.

> What happens if you are sick for more days than what your contract allows?

Depending on the nature of the illness and other factors, you may be eligible for unpaid (by the employer), job-protected leave under FMLA or similar state laws, and may be eligible for disability payments during that leave under state law. The employer may, even if that law does not apply, extend paid or unpaid leave beyond what it is committed to in your contract, but is under no obligation to do so.

[wccrawford]

> What happens if you are sick for more days than what your contract allows?

They threaten to fire you for taking too much sick time, and they don't pay you for the additional days. They complain that you aren't reliable enough and that they need someone who is reliable.

[sbaoufbasfub]

I found this interesting article that claims that flu days / sick days reduced the number of workplace cases by 6% by reducing the in-workplace transmission rate by 25% for one day and 40% for two days of time off.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/06/130613161831.h...

[dragonwriter]

PTO is just merging sick days with vacation, usually to mask the low combined total (the nominal “benefit” to employees compared to classic separate sick plus vacation policies is that the whole amount can be used for vacation.)

[malnourish]

I don't disagree, it was a bit alarming and while our PTO policy is better than many, there are still lots of competitive employers who offer better benefits wrt time off.

It is nice to never actually need to provide a reason/note to be out, but I think the combination does stress some of my coworkers (e.g. "I don't want to take vacation because what if I get sick", "Oh great, I'm sick, now I can't take vacation").

[jetti]

Depends on the company. I've been at places that separates them and places that don't. Before our acquisition we had 20 PTO and 10 sick days and after the acquisition we are at 25 PTO days with sick time included in that. My previous employer had unlimited sick time that was completely separate from PTO.

[Nition]

The USA is one of the few countries that doesn't enforce some amount of paid sick leave allowance[1].

[1] http://d3i6fh83elv35t.cloudfront.net/newshour/wp-content/upl...

[kalleboo]

Although some states do https://squareup.com/townsquare/californias-new-paid-sick-le...

[kzisme]

Technically I think so, but from what I've seen some people use PTO days for sick days (or to go to the doctor)?

We have 6 holidays + 1 floating that we can use, and they don't roll over from year to year.

[gpawl]

That's even worse than Amazon!

[markdown]

> Are sick days still a thing?

Why wouldn't they be? I assume they're mandatory in most countries.

[Scarblac]

In most (western, don't know otherwise) countries, you stay home when you're sick, and get paid because it's outside of your control. No matter if that is day 1 this year or day 20.

[gpawl]

So employers need to be careful not to hire sickly people?

[pertymcpert]

It's illegal to discriminate against someone because of their medical background or disability unless it's critical for the job. For medical background they wouldn't be able to get the information anyway.

Sickness is just part of the cost of doing business with people, not robots.

[izacus]

> So employers need to be careful not to hire sickly people?

Wow. O.o

So in US employers just whip sickly people into coming to work or how does that line of reasoning work?

[pertymcpert]

Well here in the UK you don't have a limit on the number of sick days. You get sick you go off work. It's separate from normal PTO allocation.

[bitwize]

I thought "personal days" are when they put sick days and vacation in the same bucket (which a lot of companies do)?

[d33]

There's something like this in Poland, but it's four days and it's mostly used for emergencies. Using it deducts the planned holiday days.

http://polishemploymentlaw.com/index.php/tag/day-off/