An American woman who works in Australia has applauded Aussie managers for their more lenient policies about sick days, confessing that she always felt terrible when she took one back home.
Kerrene Taylor, a Perth-based brand stylist and photographer, is originally from Seattle. Taylor acknowledges that after relocating to Australia for her lover and getting married to the owner of a framing shop there, she has grown to enjoy the famous sickie a lot.
I took a sick day from work today, the brand stylist recently revealed to her followers on TikTok.
And I frequently assert that adjusting to work-life balance in Australia is the biggest culture shock. Today’s need for sick leave was absolutely unproblematic. Which is basically the opposite of how I found it to be while working in the US.
Taylor told Yahoo Finance Australia that despite having some sick days available to her in the US, she never felt comfortable using them.
“In the US, I was personally entitled to paid time off (PTO), which included two weeks of sick and vacation days per year,” the woman added.
“However, there was a prevalent belief that asking for PTO would reduce productivity, and I myself experienced pressure to refuse requests for leave occasionally out of concern that I could be seen as difficult to manage, particularly in the beginning of my career.
I had read and heard a lot about the excellent work-life balance in Australia before I came there. It seemed to play a significant role in the local culture. My personal experience has demonstrated the direct influence it has on general happiness and sound mental health.
However, Taylor does not believe that Australians are lax.
When the “broader culture” encourages both, it is “clear that employees can both produce at work and enjoy a healthy work-life balance,” she said.
However, as Dr. Eugene Schofield-Georgeson from the Faculty of Law at the University of Technology Sydney notes, the average Australian works a full four days of unpaid overtime for every legally permitted sick day, and the majority of those sick days are never used.
Schofield-Georgeson told Yahoo Finance Australia that “when the language of wage theft is used, employers frequently retort that many employees dishonestly take sick leave.”
However, if we look at the OECD data on Australian working hours, each Australian employee works an average of eight unpaid 38-hour weeks each year, or six hours per week.
Now contrast that with the 10 sick days that employees are legally entitled to each year, the majority of which go unused.
In fact, Taylor points out that even while Australia has far superior worker rights than the US, this shouldn’t stand in the way of advancement.
Although it is not ideal, she remarked, “What I have seen is a culture that is much closer to a healthier work-life balance than the US.”
“Even the comments on my TikTok video show that Australian workers’ experiences vary depending on the business. Teachers and those in the hospitality and healthcare industries appear to be struggling the most.