Rising sick leave rates might be bad news for German companies amid an already ailing economy — but for private eye Marcus Lentz, it has been a boon for his business.
He is receiving a record number of requests from firms for his agency to check up on employees suspected of calling 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 said, adding that his Lentz Group was receiving up to 1,200 such requests annually, about double the figure from a few years earlier.
Photo: AFP
“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.
From auto titans to fertilizer producers, companies are ringing the alarm about the effects of high rates of sick leave on Europe’s biggest economy.
While some say changes to reporting in sick have made it easier to fake illnesses, experts say the reasons behind the rising numbers are more complex, ranging from increases in mental illnesses to more work pressure.
Many agree that the trend is weighing on Germany as the country’s woes, from a manufacturing slowdown to weak demand for its exports, have led some to once again dub it “the sick man of Europe.”
“The impact is significant and certainly affects economic activity,” said Claus Michelsen, chief economist at the German Association of Research-Based Pharmaceutical Companies.
The association calculated that higher rates of absenteeism at work due to illness shaved 0.8 percent off Germany’s output in last year — helping push the economy into a 0.3 percent contraction. Workers in Germany on average took 15.1 days of sick leave last year, up from 11.1 days in 2021, data from the German Federal Statistical Office showed.
The TK, one of Germany’s major statutory health insurers, reported that the average number of sick days among workers it covers was 14.13 in the first nine months of the year — a record high.
Germans missed on average 6.8 percent of their working hours last year due to illness — worse than other EU countries such as France, Italy and Spain, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development data showed.
Some corporate leaders have been outspoken about the problem, with Mercedes-Benz chief executive Ola Kallenius lamenting that “absenteeism in Germany is sometimes twice as high as in other European countries.”
Elon Musk’s electric vehicle giant Tesla went further, reportedly sending managers worried about high illness-related absences at its German factory to personally check up on employees on sick leave at their homes.
Critics say a system of allowing patients with mild symptoms to obtain sick notes from their doctor over the telephone is providing employees who could work an easy way to take days off — or fake illnesses entirely.
Some industry groups are calling for the system, first introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic, to be abolished.
Lentz said that in many cases where people are pretending to be sick for long periods, they are working on the side.
He gave the example of a person who was helping out at his wife’s business while officially off sick. Others, have taken long-term sick leave to renovate their properties, he said.
While it can be expensive to hire a detective, Lentz said firms would be looking to get rid of highly unproductive workers amid mounting economic woes.
“They say, anyone who is off sick so often is not making us any money — out they go,” he said.
Still, not everyone is convinced the high reported sick rates reflect the true picture.
Some say a new system whereby doctors automatically transmit sick notes to patients’ insurance companies has led to more accurate reporting of sick leave, pushing up the figures.
Others meanwhile take a more nuanced view of the rising trend. The Hans Boeckler Foundation’s Institute of Economic and Social Research, which is linked to German trade unions, said blaming workers for deciding to stay home too easily or for faking sickness were “dangerous shortcuts.”
“They obscure the view of the really relevant causes,” said institute science director Bettina Kohlrausch, who pointed instead to more stressful working conditions, increasing respiratory ailments and fraying social protections.
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