[nicbou]

I help immigrants integrate for a living. Germany can be a frustrating country, but this is one of its best redeeming qualities.

I'd also add that the culture allows and encourages sick days. The average is 15 sick days per year IIRC.

[patates]

Totally off-topic, but I read your profile to learn about this: https://allaboutberlin.com - you do awesome work, thank you!

Now I wonder if I could help the immigrants in my area (I'm in Hesse/Hessen), thanks for the inspiration too.

[teruakohatu]

The average number of sick days used is 15 or the number of days offered?

In New Zealand we get a minimum of 10 sick working days per year but some companies offer more and allow unused sick leave to accumulate.

[Genmutant]

You don't have an offered number of sick days in Germany. If you're sick, your sick. At some points (after 6 weeks) the employer stops paying for it, and the payment switches to the health insurance and drops down to 70% of your usual gross salary (with some more specifics).

[tumdum_]

Sick days are not “offered” by employers. Sick days are prescribed by the doctors and there is no upper limit. After all, your sickness will not disappear just because it has been N days. That's at last how it is in Poland.

[Autious]

Sweden has 14 sick days no questions asked before you need a doctors note. The German way of having to call your doctor for a flu note is a little odd to me. You do loose the first day's pay (the meme is that too many people were off sick when there was a world cup finals or something), and then 80% pay.

[lionkor]

This is not accurate. In Germany, you usually only have to get a doctor's note at 2 or 3 days, if youre only sick for a day or two you don't need one.

And there's an unlimited number of sick days. As long as you have a doctor's note, you still get paid, up to some ridiculous limit at which you might have to get government support instead.

[fabian2k]

It's up to the employer, they can ask for a doctor's note from day 1. Many employers have more lenient rules, though.

[inigyou]

I think at some limit the health insurance pays back the employer, right?

[jorvi]

> You do loose the first day's pay

Many countries have this system and the usual effect is that the duration people are sick for is magically never less than 2 days. It's dumb policy.

[msh]

yeah, when denmark switched from loosing first days pay to the first day also being paid sick rates dropped more than enough to pay for it.

[sensanaty]

Even the concept that you need permission from your employer to take a sick day is crazy to me. After all, if you're sick, you're sick, not like a hard deadline of 15 days (or whatever) is going to make the sickness go away?

[degamad]

The point of the deadline is not that you can't be off work, but that you stop getting paid for not working.

For example, the way it works in Australia is that after you have used up your sick days, you have to take any further absences from work out of your annual leave balance, and once that is exhausted, you switch to leave without pay.

I had a downline team member who once needed to extend their time away from work for over 5 months due to illness. They had been with the company for several years at that point, so they had a reasonable sick leave balance, probably 10 weeks. When it became clear that they needed longer, they used their remaining 4 weeks of annual leave, then took a month of leave without pay, then another. They were still employed, I approved their leave requests each time they needed to extend, and we just used the most appropriate tool that was available at the time.

The thing you're getting permission for is not to be sick, it is to be considered still employed while not doing work, rather than being fired/disciplined for being AWOL.

[account42]

And you'd think that it would be in the interest of the employer too to not have people come in with a flu and infect everyone in the office.

[nicbou]

I wrote a primer about sick days here: https://allaboutberlin.com/guides/sick-leave

15 is the average. I use it to reassure people that it's okay to take sick days, and not one of those rights that no one dares to use.

Usually, employers ask for a doctors' note after 3 consecutive sick days, but the reason for the sickness remains hidden from the employer. The note just gives a time range, nothing more.