Even if it is only on rare occasions and for just one or two days, I am sure that more than one of you has taken sick leave without actually being sick. If we multiply that by the millions of Spanish citizens who have a job right now and who carry out similar practices, this becomes a serious problem for Social Security.
In fact, we can say that at this moment the sick leave that workers are taking at this time is a serious problem for the State. It is something that we may have never thought about, but these you get sick without really being sickeven if they are punctual, represent an enormous expense for Social Security.
I’m sure this is a fact that most of you were unaware of, but let’s try to get an idea of what these small misdeeds, in principle without malice, mean. Justified or not, throughout the past year 2023 in our country a total of more than of 8 million sick leaves by the workers. In reality the problem is not there, the problem is given by the 14 billion euros of cost who had all of it.
Hence the very Social security is beginning to take a series of measures to try to solve this, since it may become unsustainable in the future. Precisely for all this, at this moment the SS that we mentioned has begun to use a new strategy to try to control these sick leaves starting this year 2024. All this in order to eliminate, as far as possible, the unjustified absences from work and try to reduce that enormous expense that we have mentioned.
Therefore, at this point, from now on Social Security itself will request some additional data to companies about employees who are currently on sick leave. This will include certain data such as the job position of each of these employees, as well as details about the work they performed there.
Basically, all this information will help you to assess whether the illness that is causing the employee in question to be on sick leave actually limits his or her day-to-day work duties. It can also help you to know exactly How does this disease affect in their duties in the company. And it is that with the data extracted from the workers with sick leave To date, they are not sufficient to understand whether it is justified or not.
Furthermore, it must be kept in mind that with this new mode of operation, what is wanted is understand the working conditions a little better of the workers and their pathologies at that time. Obviously, for all this the State needs the collaboration of companies with workers who have taken sick leave. Otherwise, the collection of this additional information that we have mentioned before would be quite complicated.