FRANKFURT, GERMANY –
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 said, 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.
From auto titans to fertilizer producers, companies are ringing the alarm about the impact of high rates of sick leave on Europe's biggest economy.
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.
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