Sick Moroccans: Absenteeism
15 September 2008
Read by 1953 persons
They proliferate in the administration but also operate in the private sector; they have deployed a thousand tricks, used the craziest subterfuges. These shirkers prevent the country from taking off and give a negative image of the administration. This has made absenteeism a national sport.
The anecdote of the teacher who allegedly sold his school to a Moroccan living abroad is old news, as is the story of the civil servant who leaves a jacket on his chair before secretly traveling. The emergency room doctor who locks himself in the treatment room to take a nap; shirkers are legion in both the administration and the private sector and rival each other in ingenuity to defraud the employer. With Ramadan, shirkers are in high demand: the permission to be absent becomes practically official. Fasting is a convenient excuse, and all pretexts are commonly accepted. Don't we stay up until dawn? Doesn't fasting have negative consequences on the morale of Moroccans? Do smokers and others deprived of alcohol still have the strength to drag themselves to the office? In short, to find a civil servant at the town hall before 11 a.m., you have to get up early. As for hoping to get a document signed in any administration after 2 p.m., it's better not to dream too much.
Paradoxically, while everyone recognizes that Moroccans are champions in all categories of work hour fraud, the lack of statistics in the evaluation of absenteeism considerably complicates the collection of information. It is almost impossible to obtain the slightest figures on the evaluation of the phenomenon, and even less to establish relationships between absenteeism and criteria such as age, seniority, gender, or level of training. The boundaries are blurred between "white absenteeism" (people who are genuinely ill) and "black absenteeism" (the world of fraudsters).
Theoretically, the civil servant or worker who avoids the office or factory has the right to legalize his absence by producing a medical certificate. But the question remains whether or not the document produced is simply a certificate of convenience. The administration does not have the medical expertise to initiate proceedings to establish the rather convenient nature of the medical certificate. In this matter, the applicable rules are based on jurisprudence and the rights attached to sick leave.
In this case, the employer seems to be able to rely only on a counter-medical examination to show a possible avenue of appeal, knowing that this can only be initiated after receipt of the medical certificate. A real headache.
Complicated control procedures
In the arsenal devised to deal with the phenomenon, some administrations have limited the duration of a medical certificate to three days; otherwise, beyond that, the procedure is so complicated that it would discourage the most audacious of shirkers. Despite this, specialists in work avoidance have found a way around it: they present a three-day sick leave, followed by another sick leave, and so on. But the most serious thing, according to most of the heads of department consulted, is that there are long-term certificates against which no recourse is possible. "Just in Rabat, we have a list of specialists, including a psychiatrist, who sell their certificates for a high price, but we have no way to put an end to these practices," says an official at the Ministry of Health. Indeed, the only regulatory way remains the organization of a counter-visit. Bosses are perfectly authorized to have a counter-visit carried out. It is then up to the employee to challenge the decision judicially.
Concretely, the doctor in charge of carrying out the counter-visit first tries to ascertain the non-existence of the illness. Which is no small feat. "Go and distinguish between a real illness and a simulated illness in an employee who claims to have severe headaches or a civil servant who is lounging in front of the television feigning severe depression!" remarks Dr. Laftit, who spent a large part of his career carrying out counter-visits.
"Detecting simulation is not always that simple. But when you go to an employee who has presented a medical certificate for lumbago and you find him moving house carrying heavy loads, at least doubt is allowed," adds our brave doctor. But what he doesn't say is that the medical profession in this sector is so united that it would never occur to a doctor to disavow a colleague. Especially when one knows that if the vast majority of doctors respect professional ethics, complacency is common, and the refusal of a certificate of convenience by one practitioner means a lost consultation for one, but quickly gained for another. Finally, the poorly managed social security system encourages absenteeism. On sick leave, the employee receives a good part of his salary within the limit of the Social Security ceiling, while his employer makes up the difference. Thus, for 90 days, duly stamped as sick, the employee keeps his full salary. Hence the temptation to abuse it.
So are civil servants and other employees, rather shirkers, potential criminals? According to most bosses, the answer is often positive, except that miserable salaries, blatant contempt, and lack of promotion strongly mitigate the observation. Experts also distinguish several categories of causes of absenteeism, the most flagrant of which are working conditions and the work environment: a difficult environment, failing infrastructure, or poor prioritization of tasks. Other socio-economic reasons also come into play. These include staff shortages, increased productivity, and stress due to inappropriate staff restructuring.
Finally, there are problems related to the personal sphere, which are often invoked to explain illegitimate absences. While this is a reserved domain for professional shirkers who haunt administrations, it is nevertheless necessary to acknowledge the real weight of problems related to transport, housing, and childcare. Unpleasant side effects that are often the sole responsibility of the employee. Which companies or administrations care about the transport of their employees, let alone housing issues? Which structures also define clear objectives for their employees? Employees would be more motivated and involved if they were not asked to reach for the moon with a broom. More seriously, if they were given the means to achieve commercial or ambitious objectives, by providing them with logistics or technical resources in line with the missions assigned to them. Not to mention that employees are perfectly aware that even if they achieve the assigned objectives, they will not be rewarded by management. Bosses are as stingy with financial rewards as they are with verbal congratulations. As a result, in administrations or companies that practice a purely repressive approach, the backlash is not long in coming. Asked not to be absent under penalty of sanctions, employees are present: this is called "presenteeism," in short, the act of being at work even when ill. The sick person does not work to the best of his ability. As for chronic illnesses—migraines, depression, back pain, diabetes, arthrosis, asthma, and other allergies—the sick who have not had time to recover drag themselves from office to office. Professional shirkers are present, but they sit idly by waiting for the time to leave. They surf the internet, remain glued to the phone, take ten coffee breaks a day, and inevitably their productivity suffers. Presenteeism then turns out to be worse than absenteeism…
How to fight shirkers?
American researchers have also explored the phenomenon of "presenteeism" and quickly discovered its harmful effects. A survey by the very serious "Harvard Business Review," which cites a productivity audit conducted over one year with 29,000 American employees, reveals that the cost of presenteeism exceeds $150 billion per year. In the private sector, the issue is less difficult, since most companies use time clocks, not to mention the all-purpose security guard who counts the entries and exits of personnel for the boss. But it is in the public service that things are creaking. In the Akhchichine department, it was decided at the beginning of this school year to make life difficult for the apparently well-established shirkers. To ferret out fraudsters, the Ministry of National Education decided to continue to hit shirkers where it hurts most, with salary deductions. In financial terms, salary deductions resulting from these irregular absences are estimated at more than 17 million dirhams for 2007, compared to 7 million in 2006, and the rest is in proportion.
Profiles and trends
The hypochondriac: on the verge of suicide
The shirker who loves repeated sick leave plays at being tired so much that he ends up really being tired. He lacks punch, loves playing the victim, and ultimately develops real stress-related pathologies. Not only does his health seem fragile, his morale fluctuates, but he always has a sick child or parent. "I had a character like that among my employees. He managed to have a death per week in the family until the day he pulled the death of his father, whom he had already buried once the previous year," recalls the director of an SME in Ain Sebaa operating in the textile industry. This particular employee is eternally tired. Depending on the case, he is really sick or an imaginary sufferer. Imaginary sick person, real depressive? If for doctors who do not hesitate to extend the duration of sick leave, there is a real need to disconnect, bosses consider this kind of shirker as parasites.
The star: always disappointed
Because he has a high opinion of himself, he does not understand why he is not the one sitting in the boss's chair. To show that he is not valued at his true worth, he decides to quit. His job or the position he has been given does not satisfy his personal or financial ambitions. As he dreamed of breaking through, of being among the winners, he ended up settling for a minimum wage job that he deeply despises. As a result, he is either bored or feels overwhelmed and quits. Since his work is a real prison, he often changes employers, argues with his colleagues, grumbles constantly, and performs his tasks very reluctantly. When he does not try to find all the possible and imaginable ways to slip away and do as little as possible.
The opportunist: he waves his arms cheerfully
The opportunist knows the law and the labor code very well; he takes advantage of the slightest flaw in the system, uses and abuses the boss's kindness and his colleagues' availability. He plays the affectionate card with the women, who refuse him nothing. Apparently always in the office and always carrying loads of hot files, he systematically falls back on his colleagues, unloading his work on them. Cheeky, even downright brazen, he seizes the floor in public to show that he is very active, while secretly, he does nothing. In general, he has real human qualities, such as the ability to settle disputes between colleagues; he knows how to find the right words to console, etc. But he is always overbooked…which allows him to make his entourage work in his place. He delegates profusely to his teams, has interminable lunches, dashes through the corridors with a pile of files under his arm, and confides intimate information about the boss in secret.
The privileged: He takes full advantage of proximity
He is the boss's son, the close friend of a big security or political figure, or simply the director's lover… A "shirker" by proximity. As a result, he is part of the "untouchables." The caste of those who take advantage of their privileged relationships (real or supposed) to play boss in the latter's absence. Feeling protected because of this special status, they do nothing and rely on the staff to work in their place. They sometimes have real expertise in the market, but prefer to conserve their professional abilities to shamelessly benefit from the privileged relationships they have with the boss.
The revolutionary: his rebellion is contagious
The revolutionary spends more time criticizing his boss, the passivity of his colleagues, and the company than working. He has notions of unionism and seems to have understood class struggle well. So, he feels a duty to warn his colleagues against the exploitation of their boss; he urges them to always demand more benefits but takes care not to show himself. The essential thing for him is to have the possibility of making a quick escape, to sit idly by without being denounced. This gives him a status of opinion leader among his colleagues, while for his boss, he is a real troublemaker and pushes others to slow down the pace. An eternal rebel, he can be very influential. As a consequence, bosses often prefer to compromise with this agitator instead of engaging in a power struggle. Some even manage to obtain a "permit to do nothing," hence the famous detachment that allows a civil servant or employee to be exempted from coming to the office for "union reasons."
Posted on September 15, 2008
Lagazettedumaroc.com
The anecdote of the teacher who allegedly sold his school to a Moroccan living abroad is old news, as is the story of the civil servant who leaves a jacket on his chair before secretly traveling. The emergency room doctor who locks himself in the treatment room to take a nap; shirkers are legion in both the administration and the private sector and rival each other in ingenuity to defraud the employer. With Ramadan, shirkers are in high demand: the permission to be absent becomes practically official. Fasting is a convenient excuse, and all pretexts are commonly accepted. Don't we stay up until dawn? Doesn't fasting have negative consequences on the morale of Moroccans? Do smokers and others deprived of alcohol still have the strength to drag themselves to the office? In short, to find a civil servant at the town hall before 11 a.m., you have to get up early. As for hoping to get a document signed in any administration after 2 p.m., it's better not to dream too much.
Paradoxically, while everyone recognizes that Moroccans are champions in all categories of work hour fraud, the lack of statistics in the evaluation of absenteeism considerably complicates the collection of information. It is almost impossible to obtain the slightest figures on the evaluation of the phenomenon, and even less to establish relationships between absenteeism and criteria such as age, seniority, gender, or level of training. The boundaries are blurred between "white absenteeism" (people who are genuinely ill) and "black absenteeism" (the world of fraudsters).
Theoretically, the civil servant or worker who avoids the office or factory has the right to legalize his absence by producing a medical certificate. But the question remains whether or not the document produced is simply a certificate of convenience. The administration does not have the medical expertise to initiate proceedings to establish the rather convenient nature of the medical certificate. In this matter, the applicable rules are based on jurisprudence and the rights attached to sick leave.
In this case, the employer seems to be able to rely only on a counter-medical examination to show a possible avenue of appeal, knowing that this can only be initiated after receipt of the medical certificate. A real headache.
Complicated control procedures
In the arsenal devised to deal with the phenomenon, some administrations have limited the duration of a medical certificate to three days; otherwise, beyond that, the procedure is so complicated that it would discourage the most audacious of shirkers. Despite this, specialists in work avoidance have found a way around it: they present a three-day sick leave, followed by another sick leave, and so on. But the most serious thing, according to most of the heads of department consulted, is that there are long-term certificates against which no recourse is possible. "Just in Rabat, we have a list of specialists, including a psychiatrist, who sell their certificates for a high price, but we have no way to put an end to these practices," says an official at the Ministry of Health. Indeed, the only regulatory way remains the organization of a counter-visit. Bosses are perfectly authorized to have a counter-visit carried out. It is then up to the employee to challenge the decision judicially.
Concretely, the doctor in charge of carrying out the counter-visit first tries to ascertain the non-existence of the illness. Which is no small feat. "Go and distinguish between a real illness and a simulated illness in an employee who claims to have severe headaches or a civil servant who is lounging in front of the television feigning severe depression!" remarks Dr. Laftit, who spent a large part of his career carrying out counter-visits.
"Detecting simulation is not always that simple. But when you go to an employee who has presented a medical certificate for lumbago and you find him moving house carrying heavy loads, at least doubt is allowed," adds our brave doctor. But what he doesn't say is that the medical profession in this sector is so united that it would never occur to a doctor to disavow a colleague. Especially when one knows that if the vast majority of doctors respect professional ethics, complacency is common, and the refusal of a certificate of convenience by one practitioner means a lost consultation for one, but quickly gained for another. Finally, the poorly managed social security system encourages absenteeism. On sick leave, the employee receives a good part of his salary within the limit of the Social Security ceiling, while his employer makes up the difference. Thus, for 90 days, duly stamped as sick, the employee keeps his full salary. Hence the temptation to abuse it.
So are civil servants and other employees, rather shirkers, potential criminals? According to most bosses, the answer is often positive, except that miserable salaries, blatant contempt, and lack of promotion strongly mitigate the observation. Experts also distinguish several categories of causes of absenteeism, the most flagrant of which are working conditions and the work environment: a difficult environment, failing infrastructure, or poor prioritization of tasks. Other socio-economic reasons also come into play. These include staff shortages, increased productivity, and stress due to inappropriate staff restructuring.
Finally, there are problems related to the personal sphere, which are often invoked to explain illegitimate absences. While this is a reserved domain for professional shirkers who haunt administrations, it is nevertheless necessary to acknowledge the real weight of problems related to transport, housing, and childcare. Unpleasant side effects that are often the sole responsibility of the employee. Which companies or administrations care about the transport of their employees, let alone housing issues? Which structures also define clear objectives for their employees? Employees would be more motivated and involved if they were not asked to reach for the moon with a broom. More seriously, if they were given the means to achieve commercial or ambitious objectives, by providing them with logistics or technical resources in line with the missions assigned to them. Not to mention that employees are perfectly aware that even if they achieve the assigned objectives, they will not be rewarded by management. Bosses are as stingy with financial rewards as they are with verbal congratulations. As a result, in administrations or companies that practice a purely repressive approach, the backlash is not long in coming. Asked not to be absent under penalty of sanctions, employees are present: this is called "presenteeism," in short, the act of being at work even when ill. The sick person does not work to the best of his ability. As for chronic illnesses—migraines, depression, back pain, diabetes, arthrosis, asthma, and other allergies—the sick who have not had time to recover drag themselves from office to office. Professional shirkers are present, but they sit idly by waiting for the time to leave. They surf the internet, remain glued to the phone, take ten coffee breaks a day, and inevitably their productivity suffers. Presenteeism then turns out to be worse than absenteeism…
How to fight shirkers?
American researchers have also explored the phenomenon of "presenteeism" and quickly discovered its harmful effects. A survey by the very serious "Harvard Business Review," which cites a productivity audit conducted over one year with 29,000 American employees, reveals that the cost of presenteeism exceeds $150 billion per year. In the private sector, the issue is less difficult, since most companies use time clocks, not to mention the all-purpose security guard who counts the entries and exits of personnel for the boss. But it is in the public service that things are creaking. In the Akhchichine department, it was decided at the beginning of this school year to make life difficult for the apparently well-established shirkers. To ferret out fraudsters, the Ministry of National Education decided to continue to hit shirkers where it hurts most, with salary deductions. In financial terms, salary deductions resulting from these irregular absences are estimated at more than 17 million dirhams for 2007, compared to 7 million in 2006, and the rest is in proportion.
Profiles and trends
The hypochondriac: on the verge of suicide
The shirker who loves repeated sick leave plays at being tired so much that he ends up really being tired. He lacks punch, loves playing the victim, and ultimately develops real stress-related pathologies. Not only does his health seem fragile, his morale fluctuates, but he always has a sick child or parent. "I had a character like that among my employees. He managed to have a death per week in the family until the day he pulled the death of his father, whom he had already buried once the previous year," recalls the director of an SME in Ain Sebaa operating in the textile industry. This particular employee is eternally tired. Depending on the case, he is really sick or an imaginary sufferer. Imaginary sick person, real depressive? If for doctors who do not hesitate to extend the duration of sick leave, there is a real need to disconnect, bosses consider this kind of shirker as parasites.
The star: always disappointed
Because he has a high opinion of himself, he does not understand why he is not the one sitting in the boss's chair. To show that he is not valued at his true worth, he decides to quit. His job or the position he has been given does not satisfy his personal or financial ambitions. As he dreamed of breaking through, of being among the winners, he ended up settling for a minimum wage job that he deeply despises. As a result, he is either bored or feels overwhelmed and quits. Since his work is a real prison, he often changes employers, argues with his colleagues, grumbles constantly, and performs his tasks very reluctantly. When he does not try to find all the possible and imaginable ways to slip away and do as little as possible.
The opportunist: he waves his arms cheerfully
The opportunist knows the law and the labor code very well; he takes advantage of the slightest flaw in the system, uses and abuses the boss's kindness and his colleagues' availability. He plays the affectionate card with the women, who refuse him nothing. Apparently always in the office and always carrying loads of hot files, he systematically falls back on his colleagues, unloading his work on them. Cheeky, even downright brazen, he seizes the floor in public to show that he is very active, while secretly, he does nothing. In general, he has real human qualities, such as the ability to settle disputes between colleagues; he knows how to find the right words to console, etc. But he is always overbooked…which allows him to make his entourage work in his place. He delegates profusely to his teams, has interminable lunches, dashes through the corridors with a pile of files under his arm, and confides intimate information about the boss in secret.
The privileged: He takes full advantage of proximity
He is the boss's son, the close friend of a big security or political figure, or simply the director's lover… A "shirker" by proximity. As a result, he is part of the "untouchables." The caste of those who take advantage of their privileged relationships (real or supposed) to play boss in the latter's absence. Feeling protected because of this special status, they do nothing and rely on the staff to work in their place. They sometimes have real expertise in the market, but prefer to conserve their professional abilities to shamelessly benefit from the privileged relationships they have with the boss.
The revolutionary: his rebellion is contagious
The revolutionary spends more time criticizing his boss, the passivity of his colleagues, and the company than working. He has notions of unionism and seems to have understood class struggle well. So, he feels a duty to warn his colleagues against the exploitation of their boss; he urges them to always demand more benefits but takes care not to show himself. The essential thing for him is to have the possibility of making a quick escape, to sit idly by without being denounced. This gives him a status of opinion leader among his colleagues, while for his boss, he is a real troublemaker and pushes others to slow down the pace. An eternal rebel, he can be very influential. As a consequence, bosses often prefer to compromise with this agitator instead of engaging in a power struggle. Some even manage to obtain a "permit to do nothing," hence the famous detachment that allows a civil servant or employee to be exempted from coming to the office for "union reasons."
Posted on September 15, 2008
Lagazettedumaroc.com
