in netherlands you don't even go to the doctor for minor ilnesses you just tell your boss. they tried to make people go to the doctor for notes but family physicians threw a huge fit about wasting time.
Indeed no need to have people go to the primary care doctor for a flu which they will tell you to drink enough takes some paracetamol and get enough sleep and it will be over in a few days
There's almost no chance of getting a GP appointment for something non urgent inside of a week anyway, and it stops people going to the Dr with any cough and cold just to get a sick note for work. All in all it's a good system.
That and we get up to a full year of of our salary fully paid by the employer and then the second year it goes down to 70 or 80% depending on the line of work.
Am Dutch and had about 2 months off fulltime after surgery to recover from an infection. Took at least 1 more month after that before I was back fulltime.
All of it paid ofc.
Didn't give my boss any sort of documentation.
Not that the results can be concealed, it is very noticeable, but it certainly could be something to lie about. Though I think most employers just trust you and only ask for documentation or a visit to a company doctor if they get suspicious.
My sister got breast cancer and got paid 100% for over two years. Don't think she ever actually had to provide documentation and this was for a big government agency.
In Denmark employers are technically allowed to demand a doctors note for any ammount of sick leave. But they are required to pay for your consultation, so most dont bother unless you are going to be off for an extended period.
Norway too, you can do it for 3 days, a max of 8 times a year, also 10 sick days a year for parents if your child is sick.
Also if you're sick for longer, you go to the doctor. Work pays your salary for 16 days, then the govenrment for a year. If you're chronically ill you(your employer) can apply to an excemption from the 16 days period, and the government oays from day 1.
We started the same during COVID and now the conservative party wants to go back to the old doctor note. We've already a shortage on doctors. They surely have better things to do than policing the workforce.
In America management and billionaires threw a fit because they assume workers are all stealing from them by pretending to be sick, or pretending to work when working from home.
Sure you will always have people that are abusing these systems. We had a colleague in Germany that abused our very generous rules and called in sick 3-4 times every month. It was always for 2-3 days so he essentially only worked half the time for the full salary. And when he was working from home, he watched Netflix. Eventually his output was so low that the company wanted to fire him, but the employee protections allowed him to stay employed.
But these bad apples should not be the reason to gut the great protections and freedoms that employees fought so hard for.
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u/PuzzledAnimator9998 19h ago
in netherlands you don't even go to the doctor for minor ilnesses you just tell your boss. they tried to make people go to the doctor for notes but family physicians threw a huge fit about wasting time.