Is This the Career We’re Missing? How Germany’s ‘Sick Leave Detectives’ Are Thriving Amid a Corporate Crackdown 👀
Rising sick leave rates may be bad news for German companies at a time the economy is already ailing — but for private eye Marcus Lentz, it has been a boon for his business. He is seeing a record number of requests from firms for his agency to check up on employees suspected of calling in sick when they are actually fit to work.
“There are just more and more companies that don’t want to put up with it anymore,” he told AFP, adding his Lentz Group was receiving up to 1,200 such requests annually, around double the figure from a few years earlier. “If someone has 30, 40 or sometimes up to 100 sick days in a year, then at some point they become economically unattractive for the employer,” he said in an interview at his office in the gritty district around Frankfurt’s main train station.
While some say changes to reporting in sick have made it easier to fake illnesses, experts insist the reasons behind the rising numbers are more complex, ranging from increases in mental illnesses to more work pressure.
Detective Lentz said in many cases where people are pretending to be sick for long periods, they are doing work on the side. He gave the example of a person who was helping out at his wife’s business while officially off sick. Others, he said, have taken long-term sick leave to renovate their properties.
While it can be expensive to hire a detective, Lentz said firms will be looking to get rid of highly unproductive workers at a time of mounting economic woes. “They say, anyone who is off sick so often is not making us any money — out they go,” he said.
