People are talking about it more and more often the phenomenon of “bridging” weekends — that is, using sick leave as an informal day off.
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The statistics show a clear pattern. About 23.6 percent one-day sick leave falls on Fridays, and 20.5 percent for Mondays. In total, this amounts to over 44%. all one-day absences.
Labor market experts quoted by “Dziennik Gazeta Prawna” point out that it is no longer a random statistic, but a repeatable pattern of employee behavior. More and more often, sick leave occurs on days between holidays or during long weekends.
One-day L4 disorganizes work the most
Contrary to appearances, the biggest problem for companies is not long-term illness of employees. Short, sudden absences cause the greatest difficulties. One-day L4 appears unannounced and often makes it impossible to quickly find a replacement.
This situation particularly complicates work in industries based on graphics and shifts, such as production, logistics and construction.. Even one absence can disrupt the work organization of the entire team.
How does redundancy control work?
Theoretically, the Social Insurance Institution can check every sick leave, including one-day leave. In practice this is not always possible. The electronic e-ZLA exemption is entered into the system immediately, but the inspection itself requires a decision, organization of the visit and the controller's travel.
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As a result, in the case of very short leaves of absence, the so-called an inspection window that often lasts just a few hours. If dismissal starts in the morning, before the inspection is organized, the day may already be over.
New regulations from April
The changes are to be brought about by new regulations that will enter into force on April 13, 2026. Sick leave inspections will be more formalized, and after each inspector visit, a detailed report will be prepared describing the findings.
As the newspaper writes, However, the new system will not speed up the inspections themselves. Its main goal is to document and analyze absenteeism data more accurately. This means that ZUS will increasingly analyze not individual exemptions, but their repetition.
