"My employee does not want to share the cause of absenteeism "

In most cases, an employee will tell you immediately upon calling in sick what caused the absenteeism. Some employees will even tell you what color ends up in the toilet or exactly how many stitches are needed for the cut on the hand. However in some cases, an employee does not want to tell at all the cause of absenteeism; which in many cases leads to great frustration on the part of the supervisor.

When an employee does not want to share the cause, I often notice a sense of mistrust and misunderstanding on the part of the supervisor. A feeling of powerlessness and losing control in an absence file more than once causes a manager to call me, Labor and Health Advisor Simone Kolkman, irritated and wondering what to do about the absence process. Now that they can no longer talk about the complaints and limitations, they often don't know what they can talk about with the absent employee. But if we look very black and white at this situation, the employee does not need to share the cause of absenteeism with the supervisor.

But what are you allowed to ask about? As a supervisor, there are a number of things you may ask your employee when it comes to absenteeism:

The phone number and (nursing) address where your sick employee can be reached;
The probable duration of the absenteeism;
The current appointments and work activities;
Whether the employee falls under the safety net of the Sickness Benefits Act. Note that he does not have to report which category it is;
Whether the absenteeism is related to an accident at work;
Whether there is a traffic accident where damages can be recovered from the perpetrator.
But even with the answers to these questions, often the feeling of helplessness and lack of direction does not go away. Indeed, distrust toward the employee often only grows. As a Labor and Health Advisor , I advocate anyway to be less concerned with the medical side of things. The Occupational Health and Safety professionals of De Arbodienst can help to properly map out the limitations and give advice on what a possible recovery might look like. That gives me and the supervisor room to look at another side of the reintegration, namely the attitude and behavior of the employees.

How a reintegration proceeds is, of course, partly due to the employee's medical limitations, but also largely due to the employee's attitude and behavior. A motivated employee who enjoys his work will be back at work as soon as possible. Whereas an employee with the same limitations who does not actually like his work that much, and is also in the middle of a move, may take much longer to get back.

Knowing or not knowing the cause of absenteeism should not really be important to the supervisor. After all, as a supervisor, you can't solve the medical problems at all. So if an employee doesn't want to talk about the medical side, let's talk mostly about attitude and behavior. This requires a different way of thinking about absenteeism and is not always easy.

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