This London company is offering ‘hangover’ sick days to its staff
This London company is offering ‘hangover’ sick days to its staff | London Evening Standard
We’ve all had those painful days at work where you struggle to make it through the day because your promise to 'have just one drink' the night before failed. A quick catch up with friends on a school night quickly turns into shots in the local pub at last orders, cheery singing on the Night Tube and a 3am pit stop at Chicken Cottage. Next thing you know it’s 7.30am and you're staring at your alarm clock through bleary eyes, wondering how you can possibly survive an eight hour shift without curling up into a foetal position in the work toilet cubicles. While most employers have very little sympathy for these self-inflicted maladies, one London company has decided to tackle the issue by awarding its staff with ‘hangover days’: where they can legitimately call in sick if they’ve downed too many beers the night before.Dice, a music ticketing app based in Shoreditch, has introduced the unusual perk in a bid to help its staff embrace its company culture of discovering and enjoying live music, without the fear of having to set your alarm at an ungodly hour the next morning.From now on, Dice staff will be able to call in sick after a particularly late night, simply by sending ‘music’, ‘beers’ and ‘sick’ emojis via WhatsApp to their boss.The company says that the hangover days will allow its staff utter transparency, meaning there’ll be no need to fake a random bug when they can’t tell their boss the real reason they're struggling to get out of bed in the morning.Each staff member will be allowed to take a total of four hangover days per year. According to a recent study, British workers are particularly trigger-happy when it comes to calling in sick. Last year alone, 137 million working days were lost due to sickness, with the average worker taking four days off sick.Soho's best barsCEO & Founder of Dice, Phil Hutcheon said: “All our team live for music and some of the best deals in the industry happen after a gig. We trust each other and want people to be open if they’re out late experiencing live music. There is no need for a fake sick bug.”While the ‘hangover day’ might be a relatively new phenomenon, companies are beginning to recognise the need for a shakeup to the sick day system - rethinking the ‘one-size-fits-all’ model that is currently in place across Europe.While Dice staff might face more late nights on the job than the average office worker, Italy is currently debating whether it will become the first Western country to offer women paid menstrual leave.The new parliamentary law would allow female employees to take three days of paid leave each month if they experience “painful periods.”China, Japan and South Korea currently boast similar laws, and some companies such as Nike have introduced similar policies for staff.