SKIVING is apparently on the increase. Employers are reporting that more people are "taking a sickie".

On average, people take nearly two weeks off work a year through sickness or injury.

Some sick days are for genuine reasons but in a recent survey 91 per cent of employees admitted having made up an excuse.

Taking a day off for no good reason and continuing to accept payment amounts to fraud, but this never seems to occur to people.

It also inconveniences others. Skivers load extra work onto colleagues and disrupt services to clients.

In the public sector and some large companies "sickies" seem to be a widely accepted part of the culture, amounting to an unspoken conspiracy between managers and staff. In small companies fewer people take time off - perhaps because relationships are more personal and they can see the disruption it causes.

There are workplaces where absenteeism is on a massive scale.

A social services department in the North recently admitted that its 1,000 staff took an average of 28 days a year off sick.

This suggests high levels of stress, low levels of staff loyalty, shocking disregard for customers' interests - and a catastrophic failure of management. In the end, it is down to management to put this right.

If stress is the root cause it has to be tackled.

Somehow work has to be made more attractive.

People need to be valued members of a team.

A happy staff equals more profits. It is a simple equation, but incredibly difficult to achieve, particularly when managers are also over-stretched,

Absenteeism may be an old problem but management has not always kept up with people's rising expectations of work.

Many organisations badly need a more engaging style of management.