Increasing the waiting period does not reduce the number of absences due to illness, science says.

Increasing the waiting period does not reduce the number of absences due to illness, science says.

To save money, the government would like to review the waiting days system in the private sector. However, studies show that this measure has no impact on reducing sick leave.

Savings everywhere. After expressing its desire to reduce the duration of unemployment insurance, the government now wants to reform sick leave and tighten its reimbursement. According to the newspaper The gallerythe government is evaluating increase the number of waiting days for private sector employees.

An expensive measure for private companies

Today, concretely, when an employee takes sick leave for several days, the waiting period is three days. This means that Social Security only begins to compensate the employee from the fourth day of sick leave. The government wants to extend this deadline to eight days.


An idea that employers don’t like because it could cost them too much. Because if in the public service agents only have one day of waiting which is not reimbursed, in large private companies, the first three days of waiting are very often reimbursed by employers, before being covered by social security. Therefore, pushing the waiting days to six instead of three will constitute an additional burden.

In a thread posted on X, the economist François Malaussena he also said: “ according to 2 studies by DREES (Bercy) and INSEE, increasing the waiting period does not reduce the number of absences due to illness, but only increases the average duration, which therefore costs more “.

The study Drees shares specifies: “ In case of sick leave, two thirds of them (private sector employees) are protected against waiting period-induced loss of income through company insurance. Employees covered during the waiting period are not more likely to have leave during the year, but have a significantly shorter total duration of sick leave. »


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Source: Madmoizelle

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