I'm not from Norway, but other European countries also have systems that are more or less similar.

Where I live, I think most adults would find it socially rather unacceptable to abuse a sick leave, at least on a regular or systematic basis. Getting caught would be rather embarrassing. So there's a social stigma against abusing the system. (That's probably not true of everyone, and there's always somebody abusing the system, but I believe the majority would find it socially unacceptable.)

Another related difference might be that at least in Nordic countries, people place more trust in the system, and the balance between collectivism and individualism tends more towards the former. If the system is seen as more trustworthy and as more of a mutual thing, as opposed to something that everybody's trying to game anyway, cheating the system is then also less acceptable. It would be like stealing from a common coffer. (Of course not everybody sees it that way, but I think there's more of a tendency towards that in the culture. And practically nobody who's not entirely naive trusts the system unconditionally, nor should they. But many ways of gaming the system for your own benefit are less acceptable to most people than they might be in a different culture.)

We shouldn’t punish the majority for the indiscretions of the few.

Ultimately some people will abuse sick leave, just like everything else in life. But those individuals should be dealt with on a individual basis.

Otherwise you just end up treating everyone like a criminal, at which point for an individual there’s no advantage to not engaging in abusive behaviour. You’re already effectively being punished for potential abusive behaviour, might as well make the most of it and actually engage in the abusive behaviour you’re being punished for.

For people who would have trouble managing their time, like an illness late in the year, just allow a bunch of days to be rolled over to be used before the end of the next year.

I was saying that it seems better to have the PTO days to use however you want than sick days that aren't supoosed to be used for non-sickness reasons.

Are you saying that it is normal for people to use the sick days when they are not really sick?

You mention needing to consult a doctor at a certain point. This is not uncommon in the U.S., with the employer wanting a doctor's note after more than two days of absence. (As an aside I always thought that was a burden on the employee, to have to pay for a doctors visit because the employer doesn't trust them. Not as big a deal if the employer would pay for the visit, but they don't. Certainly not a perfect world we live in...)

That may indeed be the case in the US. In the scenario I'm describing, you only have vacation days. If you are sick, then this is altogether separate from your vacation days. There is no calculation or concept of using your vacation days if you are ill, or calling in sick as some form of vacation when not actually sick...at least not structurally. In some countries, if you are sick on your vacation day you even get your vacation days back!

In what way is it better for the employee to have a fixed pool of days that illness can cut into, compared to having a fixed pool of days that is truly and only yours for vacation (while not sick!)?

Maybe from the employer's perspective, costs are lower. But fortunately these are settled matters of employment regulation in Europe, and workers' well-being has been a focus.

>have to pay for a doctors visit

Indeed it's not a perfect world...no one has to pay for this in Europe.

To compare, this is how I have it, in Slovakia:

* 35 days paid vacation -- by law

* sick days as much as needed, with doctor's note -- by law

* 6 sick days without doctor's note -- company benefit

There is a limit for the extra sick days, that you can't take more than 2 in a row. You usually take them if you hope that the sickness will be over in a day or two, for example if you get a cold on Friday; or if for some reason you do not want to visit the doctor during the first day of sickness, perhaps because that's when you feel worst.

When companies require a doctor's note for any and all sick leaves, people will use the maximum amount the doctor prescribes (usually they just slap 3 days on for every sniffle).

On the other hand when people can take a handful (1-5) sick days freely, they tend to use just the bare minimum.

It's a matter of trust. The company is communicating to the employees that it trusts them to take the appropriate amount of sick days and conversely people don't abuse the trust.

At one of my earliest jobs, I would take a short lunch at my desk (I was very young and didn't know better). Management decided that they wanted to gauge how long I was lunching for, and insisted that I clock in and out for lunch. Well, you can be sure that I took the full time allotted to me after that.

Which is cause and which is consequence? Maybe Norwegians are more responsible at work because employers don’t exploit them so openly and the law gives them more protection.

Honestly the problem is that its a feedback loop. A trusting culture leads to people being more trustworthy... in the long run. The first company to do it will be taken advantage of. It will take a while for society to then frown on that and apply social pressure which will then in turn unlock more trust etc... but it's a process for sure

If the note shows that the employee cheated you get a warning. If the action is repeated then a doctor's note can be required from day one.

Start with good faith, but add some flexibility.

Personally, although I've fortunately had much need to take an appreciable number of sick days, I favor them being separate because as others note, especially with a relatively limited pool of PTO days, there's a lot of incentive to work sick.

Well, that makes sense. When I'm stressed at work, I often get sick at the weekend. Makes sense it could start early, or leak into the next week.

If you have a joined pool of 60 PTO days per year, that means more days off than separate pools of 30 vacation days + up to 30 sick days. All else being equal, of course an employee would prefer to have more days off. However, all else would not be equal. The PTO days are a cost to the employer, which means the employer can afford to shell out less in other forms of compensation. Think of the job market as a market where employers compete for employees (and vice versa, but that's tangential to the point here). Employers offer different forms of compensation to employees: salary, bonuses, paid vacation days, etc. If the government suddenly mandated that employers must give all employees more vacation days, then the employers could afford to pay out less in other forms of compensation. Sure, in the short run the employer would pay out more to employees and be less profitable, but over time they would balance out this cost by paying less in other benefits.

In other words, if you take the perspective of an employee with a 5+ year time horizon, the total amount of compensation received from the employer would not be expected to increase as a result of those government-mandated extra vacation days. What would change, however, is the incentive of people to go to work sick and infect others. If sick days cost you money, then you are incentivized to go to work sick. As a result, more people get sick. That would be bad. So from a risk/reward pespective, we have a reward of ~0, and a risk of more sickness.

Everyone getting the same combined amount of day mitigates the above, with the understanding that might be 45 PTO days instead of 30 vacation + 30 sick. This would seem to leave the problem of people who are genuinely sick for longer 15 days, under the 30+30 they'd not be dipping into their vacation days as quickly.

There will always be some number of people who run out of sick days, no matter how many you have. Maybe the policies around short-term disability should be adjusted, and the more drastic situations handled with that (requiring doctor visits, etc).

I'm currently reading "Bullshit Jobs" by David Graeber, something that rings a lot of bells for me. I'll admit to having an very questioning attitude about workplace culture lately :-)

Another thing that is important to point out is that leave days are sometimes an earned entitlement ultimately paid out to you if not taken, whereas sick leave isn't.

It's kind of insane to me that they can just be taken away like that.

[1] http://ask.legalsolutions.thomsonreuters.info/cc-nto-vacatio....

However, historically, when the two were commonly separate, the sick time would often actually be a very significant chunk (maybe a month) with the understanding that actually burning through most or all of your sick time would be a rare event because of an operation or whatever.

Just to throw out rough numbers, you might have 4 weeks of a combined PTO pool today. 20 years ago you might have had 3 weeks of vacation time and 4 weeks of sick time.

I mean there surely are people out there pushing it to the limit but it's not a problem in general.

As for your point about really getting sick by the end of the year, as long as you have a doctor's note saying you are sick, you can stay at home, no matter how long or often you've been sick before that year. I guess it works similarly in Norway.

A) Take any time off at all because they do not receive sick or vacation time.

B) Take time off because they do not have enough sick or vacation days and require rest from illness or work, but do not have realistic time in which to do either.

This brings about the perception that US workers will "use extra days," when in reality they simply do not have enough to begin with.

That doesn't make sense to me. It's better and more flexible to have 20 days to use as you want or need. let people roll over some of their unused time and everything is perfect.

It seems your way benefits the company and employees who can't manage their time.

It’s not a lie but then the next day at standup I make sure to say how much better I’m feeling. I strongly suspect all my coworkers do this too.

There's also a lot of interplay between mental and physical health. For my part, it is pretty straight-forward, that if I have a more stressful day, I will get a migraine, and need to spend several hours in a dark room. If I feel the edge of a migraine coming on, it is better for me to pre-emptively cancel meetings and take a nap rather than waiting for it to be so bad that I am forced to.

Yes, all of these can be checked to some extent, but it will not be possible to fully check everything.

The people who do follow the rules are left feeling shorted by those that don't. That doesn't seem right.

I think this happens with a lot of things. The employer can say "be trustworthy" and save money across the entire pool of employees, but the employees who follow the rules have to stand by watching other who break them.

Same thing happened with marking spots in my apartment complex. They numbered the spots to go with apartments, but don't enforce it. Someone always takes my spot. According to their rules I'm supposed to park further away in the unmarked spots, or steal someone elses spot. Most people follow the rules, so the office gets less parking complaints. But now people whose spots are taken are left worse off than before.

How is that better than just giving everyone the same number of days to manager as sick or personal for themselves?

It's also a matter of solidarity that those who can support those who can't. In this case, the healthier employees support the ones who are ill.

According to your logic above, why don't we get 100 sick days per year instead of 10? Some people need that many, fellow employees should support them too, right?

I guess the sick vs vacation day thing becomes a more of a problem in an environment where the rule-followers see a lot rule-breakers taking advantage.

I worked as a unionized grocery clerk and essentially everyone used all their sick time. People (including me) would call off just because they wanted to go to a party or something.

Some places try to avoid this by requiring a doctors note. But that's worse. I worked for a midsize electronics company that had unlimited sick time, but I needed a doctors note for anytime. I literally ralphed in the bathroom mid-day on a friday and HR made me go to the doctor on Monday to justify it, even though I was already better.

That policy is crazy because it creates a transaction cost for sick days. If I have a bad cold or stomach virus, might as well go into work than go to the doctor right?

In Sweden, the first day of sick leave is unpaid, after that it's very similar to Norway.

How would one ever know? And what's the issue if someone pretend to be sick if they have up to X days to "be sick". I don't mind at all what my coworkers do with their lives.