According to a report in The London Paper, thousands of healthy workers are faking swine flu in order to enjoy extra time off work and extend their summer holidays.

Frustrated bosses have bombarded an employment law firm with calls, claiming that staff with no obvious swine flu symptoms are taking "sickies" with the fakers causing more disruption to workplaces than the actual virus.

As previously discussed, the simple act of improving absence monitoring in your organisation can be enough to stop staff from calling in sick when they are not really ill. So if you're looking to tackle absenteeism, your first step should be to implement an accurate system for recording and monitoring employee leave and absence