Employees may soon be able to take up to two weeks off work with any illness and without needing a doctor's note.

According to an article in Personnel Today, the government has drawn up plans to extend the length of time staff can be off sick without a doctors' note from five days to 14 days, with the rules set to cover all illnesses and not just swine flu.

Playing down fears that this will encourage staff to sign themselves off on long-term sick leave when they are not actually ill,  Ben Willmott, an employment relations adviser at the CIPD, commented that there will only be: “a small proportion of employees that will take advantage of the situation.” He also stressed that: “the important thing for employers is to manage sickness well and keep good data on absences."

The easiest and most accurate way to monitor absence data is to implement a fast and efficient system for monitoring and recording employee leave and absence in your organisation, such as Systems Valley’s leave management application LeaveMaster.

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