FORT WAYNE – Neither rain, nor sleet, nor … the common cold can keep them away.
Northeast Indiana has dozens of workers who show up day after day and rarely – if ever – take a sick day. When they’re scheduled for work, well … that’s what they do.
Loyal. Healthy. Always present.
And they work in a variety of fields, based on responses this summer from various businesses after The Journal Gazette asked for leads on these dependable workers.
FedEx has a courier, Steve Cochran, who has been with the company 32 years and not called in sick – even though workers have paid sick days. Another courier, Laura Manes, has 28 years without a sick day and Sharon Schlaudroff, a customer service agent, has 26 years without calling in, the company said.
“In a year’s time, you know there are days they don’t feel like going into work, but I think it’s their commitment to their job, their commitment to their customers,” said Terry Burns, a local FedEx operations manager.
If FedEx employees don’t use their sick days, at the end of the year they get a check for the unused time. Burns thinks the payouts are worth it.
“Often people look at the success of corporations as what’s the bottom line at Wall Street and we just want to remind employees that it’s their commitment that really makes the corporation successful,” Burns said.
Flint & Walling Inc., which manufactures water pumps in Kendallville, came up with a list of 21 employees in its plant who have perfect attendance for periods ranging from one to four years. The company employs about 135, including office staff.
Production employees do not have paid sick days. If they miss work, the time is counted against their attendance under a point system, said Dick Conrad, the company’s human resources manager. Conrad believes “point” or similar systems are common among manufacturers.
But the lack of paid sick days, he said, doesn’t make it difficult to find workers. Most Flint & Walling job openings – unless specific skills are required – are filled based on word-of-mouth referrals.
Nucor Building Systems-Indiana in Waterloo, which employs about 320, pulled a list of more than 30 employees who have received perfect attendance awards for periods ranging from five years to 22 years.
Chris Ramer, production manager at the Waterloo plant, said production employees there don’t get paid sick days either.
If they call in, employees get an “occurrence.” But they can call in one personal day before their shift starts and get paid for the day.
And personal days don’t count against the company’s perfect attendance tracking – which comes with a financial incentive.
Production workers earn $50 per year for each consecutive year of perfect attendance. So one worker with 22 consecutive years at the end of last year earned an extra $1,100.
“The folks who are working toward a perfect attendance award, I think they don’t let little things bother them and they save their personal day for a day when they really have something come up,” Ramer said.
“We don’t want them here if they’re too sick to work, or making other people sick,” he said, “but they use their best judgment and we do a good job with that.”
Like Burns, the FedEx operations manager, Ramer agrees employers benefit from policies that reward attendance.
“Businesswise, it makes complete sense. We gain so much more by having them be here and not having to worry about what’s going to get done or not get done or finding a replacement,” he said.
“At the end of the day, I think the money is nice, but as they get in to this I think it becomes a pride thing too, and especially after the 10th or 11th year they want to keep it going.”
