Shortly after I was diagnosed last year I started vomiting at work one day - no reason, I hadn't previously felt unwell. At the time I put it down to the sudden changes in my diet and as I was still feeling nauseous and unwell, I phoned in sick the following day. We have a new system of recording sickness at work - my boss had reported it as 'diabetes'. I did find this a bit odd and to be honest, a little amusing - how can you have diabetes one day and be back to work and fine the next! As it was all very new to me - I didn't question him and soon forgot about it.
Anyway - fast forward to this week. I woke on Wednesday with a temperature and what I thought was the beginning of a migraine. I duly notified my boss of my absence. I went back to work on Thursday to find that once again, my sickness was reported as diabetes. When I asked him about it - his reply was 'Well, you do have diabetes, I didn't know what else to put.'
Am I being unreasonable by feeling like I have suddenly been labelled. I worry that if he constantly records stuff like this - it might look to the uninformed that diabetes is stopping me from doing my work.
Just needed to vent a bit!
There are just so many reasons why the record of your absence should be accurately recorded. To be fair, as a line manager I have encountered a few systems, some of which are significantly better, and techno-numpty friendly than others. It is excellent you have access to your own records, and can at least keep tabs on things, but the downside of this is that if you do nothing and just move on, you are, albeit passively, agreeing the record is correct. I would therefore urge you to approach him to have your records corrected.
I have no idea what your company's sickness policy is, but my last employer, which was a large company, employing thousands, had an excellent sickness policy which over time provided excellent sickness support for employees - up to a year on full pay, followed by up to up to the balance of the employee's working life on half pay. What a fabulous, fabulous, disaster safety net?
But, and it is a big but, there were employer safety nets in there too, whereby an investigation would be required for multiple short term absences. From memory that was any single absence of more than 5 days in a rolling year, or anyone having 2 or more absences of any duration during the same rolling year. That might seem completely draconian, but in reality, if one of my direct reports, who had been routinely fit and well and attending work, unfortunately caught flu, then a few weeks later hurt their back, resulting a breach in either of the safety nets, I just had to have a quick chat with them and satisfy myself the issues were not related, and were not manifestations of work stress. Once done, we moved on, although the rule remained in place, meaning deeper investigation would be required on any subsequent absence, which would trigger the breach.
So, it is very much in your interest to make sure your records are correct, so that absences cannot be misconstrued as poor management of your diabetes. Obviously, diabetes related absences need to be reported as such, and could be to your advantage as well as your disadvantage. Personally, I would always be willing to cut a newly diagnosed diabetic a bit more slack in the early days.
I'm sure it doesn't have to be a big thing between you and your boss, but I'm positive neither of you wants the headache of going through why he should make alterations in a few months, should you need to explain multiple absences. HR/employee reward or HR Systems should be able to assist in the mechanics of correcting the record, if need be.
Good luck with it.
