Shannon Barlow: Frog Recruitment Managing Director on whether working parents need more sick leave

Do working parents need more sick leave? 

The conversation has arisen again, Frog Recruitment polling more than 1,700 office workers, 969 of which were working parents, to find out. 

The poll revealed that 625 are coming to work sick after running out of leave, and 46% of parents use their own sick leave to stay at home with an ill child. 

Frog Recruitment Managing Director Shannon Barlow told Mike Hosking that businesses don’t necessarily need to allocate more than ten days of sick leave, but rather to work with their employees to find something that works for everyone. 

She said that it’s an issue when you’ve got to not only be able to take care of yourself and your family, and the people around you at work. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
So more insight into working parents and whether they should
be entitled to more sickly. So, Frog Recruitment has polled
more than seventeen hundred office workers, nine hundred and sixty
nine of which we're working parents. Now found that six
hundred and twenty five are coming to work sick because
they've run out of leave, and forty six percent of
parents are using their own sick leave to stay home
with an ill child. Now, Frog Recruitment Managing director Shannon
Barlow is with us. Shannon, very good morning to you.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Good morning.

Speaker 1 (00:22):
It's the age old problem, isn't it. And the tricky
thing with the problem is what do you do do?
Do you just hand out more leave? What do you do?

Speaker 2 (00:31):
Yeah? I think that businesses just need to be aware
of the impact and particularly with the incoming changes, that
some groups of people might be more affected than others.
So definitely working parents are more likely to use up
that quota of sick leave for just to be aware
of that. But I don't think that necessarily you need

(00:53):
to issue out more than the ten days, but to
really work together and to see something that's going to
work well for the people as well as for the
business as well.

Speaker 1 (01:04):
It's interesting your numbers. Nine sixty nine were working parents.
Of that six hundred and twenty five, so let's say
two thirds were coming to work sick because they'd run
out of leave. So that's a lot of leave to
run out, because between yourself and your kids, ten days
is a not unreasonable amount, isn't it.

Speaker 2 (01:20):
Yeah, definitely. But what we saw there that a big
proportion were using their sick leave to care for kids,
so forty seven percent. So if their children were sack,
I think there were some worries that you know, worth
working from home people would take advantage of that and
they wouldn't really be working, and you know, they're spending

(01:42):
more time on caring. But that's obviously not happening. So
they're doing the right thing. They can be trusted. But
it does mean that it's going to eat into that
sick leave entitlement.

Speaker 1 (01:52):
I wonder if the work from home things dissipated it
a little bit, given that you know, there will be
a number of people who can when they have to
work from home and it's no big deal.

Speaker 2 (02:00):
Yeah, definitely, So I think I was really surprised to
see that the majority, so of that whole group, fifty
percent had only used from zero so no sick days
at all up to three sick days. So again we're
worried and increasing that entitlement double. No one's ever going
to be at work, but that's definitely not happening and

(02:21):
that's not being abused. So it is that minority that
eat through the whole ten days. But yeah, it's still
an isssue when you've got to be able to care
for your faro as well as yourself and make sure
that you're looking after yourself and the others around you
at work.

Speaker 1 (02:40):
Stop Shannam, nice to talk to you. Shannon Balo, who's
the Frog Recruitment managing director with us this morning. For
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