[Fomite]

Alternately, it incentivizes coming in sick and making your co-workers sick.

As an epidemiologist, I hate policies that allow sick days to be converted into something of value, or that put's restrictions in them.

[c0vfefe]

I understand hating that from a health perspective, but for a profit-driven entity there's no resolving this issue without compromise. Sick time will always get abused by someone, so you might as well provide some incentive to not abuse it.

[Fomite]

That's one possibility. But there's also the possibility that encouraging presenteeism (which is what incentivizing hoarding sick days is) results in a net loss of productivity as sick employees both half-ass their work and also get their coworkers sick.

Which a profit-driven entity should care about.