At a time when the economy is already struggling, rising sick leave rates may be terrible news for German businesses, but for private eye Marcus Lentz, they have been a godsend to his firm.
Businesses are requesting more than ever for his agency to follow up with workers who may have called in sick when they are actually fit to work.
“There are just more and more companies that don’t want to put up with it anymore,” he told AFP, adding his Lentz Group was receiving up to 1,200 such requests annually, around double the figure from a few years earlier.
“If someone has 30, 40 or sometimes up to 100 sick days in a year, then at some point they become economically unattractive for the employer,” he said in an interview at his office in the gritty district around Frankfurt’s main train station.
Companies ranging from fertilizer manufacturers to auto giants are raising concerns about the effects of high sick leave rates on the largest economy in Europe.
Experts maintain that the causes of the rising numbers are more complicated and range from an increase in mental diseases to increased job pressure, despite some claims that modifications to reporting sick have made it simpler to fabricate illnesses.
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