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Everyone has those days where they just can’t face work. Now thanks to duvet days, you no longer have to throw a sickie. It’s Monday morning and time to get up for work. It’s one of those mornings you cannot drag yourself out of bed. You’re exhausted from a busy weekend and all you want to do is curl up under the covers until lunch-time. The good news is that now in some companies, you can. After casual days, concierge services and water coolers, it’s the latest American work trend to make its way across the Atlantic. It’s called Duvet Days and what it means is that you no longer have to throw a sickie by getting someone to ring in and tell a white lie for you. You can just phone the boss to tell him you’re staying in bed – officially. So if you don’t feel like getting out of bed, you simply call in, take a “duvet day” – and then sink back under the covers, no questions asked. The procedure varies but the most common way of operating it is to allow employees four such days a year to be taken off at a moment’s notice. It is called duvet day because most people do not use the time off to do anything more constructive other than have the luxury of a lie-in. It can be built into the annual holiday entitlement so in effect employees aren’t actually getting any extra time off. But duvet days have the appearance of a bonus because they don’t have to be booked up weeks in advance like normal holiday time. And when an employee takes a duvet day it’s a more needed break than a day off taken simply to make up holiday entitlements. American PR consultancy Text 100 offers “duvet days” as one of their perks. “As much as you’ll enjoy working at Text 100, everyone has those days where they just can’t face work. In the past, these may have been the days you would have called in sick. Now, you don’t have to pretend! Duvet days are intended as ‘mental health days’, and should not be pre-planned or used in extension to holidays. Each employee is entitled to take two ‘duvet days’ per year.” TBWA, the London ad agency is one company of many who now offer two “duvet days” a year, where workers get permission to skive off, presumably very popular on mornings after happy hour – the company provides an in-house bar with free drinks two nights a week. Those managers who are not prepared to move with the times and adopt the new work trend are more likely to be hit with the age-old “food poisoning” or the “relative’s funeral” excuse again and again from staff members. With the implementation of the duvet day system, the culture of the sickie is being put under threat. Advertising, publishing and new media firms are likely to be the first takers of the duvet day system here, particularly those with American links. Debbie O’Halloran
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