A good sick leave policy tells employees how much they are paid when they are ill, from which day, for how long and what proof they need, and in Europe it always sits on top of a statutory sick pay system. “Unlimited sick days” sounds radical, but in most European countries employees already have a legal right to paid sick leave, so the real decision is whether to top up statutory pay to full salary, remove waiting days and drop doctor’s notes for short absences.
This guide compares sick pay in Europe in six key countries, explains what an unlimited or enhanced policy really adds, summarises what the research says about absenteeism and presenteeism, shows how to model the cost and how to design safeguards. It also includes TalentUp data on how often 2026 job ads advertise enhanced sick pay: the answer is rarely, outside the UK and Ireland.
Key takeaways
- Every country covered here has statutory sick pay; an “unlimited” policy is in practice a company top-up on top of it.
- Rules differ widely: 100% for six weeks paid by the employer in Germany, at least 70% for up to two years in the Netherlands, waiting days in France, Spain and Sweden.
- Research shows sick pay levels do change absence behaviour, but cutting sick pay also pushes contagious employees to work and presenteeism is linked to more absence later.
- The cost of a top-up depends on the gap between statutory and full pay in each country: high in the UK and Spain, close to zero for short absences in Germany.
- In TalentUp’s 2026 data only 0.5% of job ads advertise enhanced sick pay, rising to 1.7% in the UK and Ireland; just 21 of about 103,000 ads mention unlimited sick days.
- Health data is special category data under the GDPR, and company sick pay counts as pay for equal-pay purposes.
What a Sick Leave Policy Covers
A complete sick leave policy answers six questions. Most disputes, and most of the cost, come from leaving one of them vague:
| Policy element |
What to define |
Typical European reference point |
| Notification |
How and by when the employee reports sickness |
Before the start of the shift or first working day |
| Evidence |
Self-certification period and when a medical certificate is needed |
From day 1 (France, Spain) to day 8 (UK, Sweden) |
| Waiting days |
Whether the first days are unpaid |
None in Germany and the UK, 3 days in France and Spain, a karensavdrag in Sweden |
| Pay level |
Percentage of salary paid, and whether the company tops up statutory pay |
From a flat statutory amount (UK) to 100% (Germany, first six weeks) |
| Duration |
How long statutory and company pay last |
From 28 weeks (UK SSP) to 104 weeks (Netherlands) |
| Return to work |
Contact during absence, phased return, reasonable adjustments, long-term cases |
Formal reintegration duties in the Netherlands |
Sick leave is one part of a wider leave and benefits package: see our guides to paid leave as a workplace benefit, vacation days in Europe and parental leave in the 27 EU countries.
Sick Pay in Europe: How Statutory Systems Compare
The table below summarises the general rules for private-sector employees in six countries, checked against official sources in October 2026. Collective agreements and contracts often improve them, and special rules apply to work accidents, occupational diseases and pregnancy.
| Country |
Who pays |
Waiting days |
Pay level |
Maximum duration |
Proof of sickness |
| United Kingdom |
Employer pays Statutory Sick Pay (SSP) |
None since 6 April 2026 (previously 3) |
The lower of £123.25 a week or 80% of average weekly earnings |
28 weeks |
Self-certification up to 7 days, then a fit note |
| Germany |
Employer for 6 weeks (Entgeltfortzahlung), then statutory health insurer (Krankengeld) |
None, after 4 weeks of employment |
100% of regular pay for 6 weeks; Krankengeld is 70% of gross, capped at 90% of net |
6 weeks employer pay; Krankengeld up to 78 weeks in 3 years for the same illness |
Medical certificate if illness lasts more than 3 calendar days; employer can ask earlier |
| France |
Social security (IJSS) plus employer complement |
3 days for IJSS; employer complement from day 8 |
IJSS 50% of daily basic wage, capped at €42.97 a day; employer tops up to 90%, then 66.66% |
IJSS up to 12 months in 3 years; complement 60 to 180 days depending on seniority |
Sick note sent to the employer within 48 hours; complement requires 1 year of seniority |
| Spain |
Employer pays days 4 to 15, then social security or mutual insurer |
3 days (days 1 to 3 unpaid by law) |
60% of the regulatory base from day 4 to 20, 75% from day 21 |
365 days, extendable by 180 |
Medical sick note (parte de baja) from day 1 |
| Netherlands |
Employer |
Check contract or collective agreement |
At least 70% of wages, topped up to the minimum wage in year 1 |
Up to 104 weeks |
Absence managed with occupational health and a reintegration plan |
| Sweden |
Employer pays sjuklön for days 1 to 14, then Försäkringskassan (sjukpenning) |
Karensavdrag: deduction of 20% of average weekly sick pay |
80% of pay from the employer |
Employer period 14 days, then sickness benefit |
Medical certificate from day 8 |
A few details matter for policy design:
- UK: since April 2026 SSP is paid from the first day of sickness and the lower earnings limit has gone, so low earners now get 80% of their earnings if that is below the flat rate. Many employers add company or occupational sick pay on top.
- Germany: the six weeks restart for a new illness, and for the same illness after six months without incapacity or twelve months after the first episode. Company top-ups usually take the form of a Krankengeldzuschuss after week six.
- France: the statutory employer complement only starts after one year of seniority and a 7-day wait, so “maintien de salaire” from day one is a genuine benefit, often financed through a prévoyance contract.
- Spain: by law the first three days of common illness are unpaid, which is why a “complemento IT al 100%” in the collective agreement or contract is valued.
- Sweden: an employee who has been sick more than 10 times in 12 months gets sjuklön without the karensavdrag from the 11th occasion.
What “Unlimited Sick Days” Really Means in Europe
US-style “unlimited sick days” policies were created where many workers had little or no statutory sick pay. In Europe the statutory right already exists and its maximum duration is set by law, so an “unlimited” policy usually combines some or all of these features:
- Top-up to 100% of salary above the statutory level (SSP in the UK, IJSS in France, the 60% or 75% benefit in Spain, the 70% floor in the Netherlands).
- No waiting days: the company pays the first days that statutory schemes leave unpaid or reduce (France, Spain, Sweden).
- No annual cap on the company top-up, instead of a fixed number of fully paid days per year.
- No medical certificate for short absences, within what national law allows (in Germany the employer can waive an early certificate; in France and Spain social security still requires one to pay benefits).
- No seniority requirement for company sick pay, for example waiving France’s one-year condition or a probation-period exclusion.
In practice most European employers that go beyond the statutory floor choose a defined enhancement, such as “full pay for the first three months, then statutory pay”, backed by long-term income protection insurance. That gives employees security without an open-ended liability for long-term illness. It also links naturally to health insurance benefits, which speed up diagnosis and treatment.
Presenteeism vs Absenteeism: What the Evidence Says
The case for generous sick pay rests on presenteeism, people working while ill. The case against rests on moral hazard, people taking more days off when absence costs them less. Both effects are real:
- Presenteeism is common. In the 2015 European Working Conditions Survey, about 42% of EU workers said they had worked while sick at least once in the previous 12 months, while 46% had been absent for health reasons. Rates exceeded 60% in Malta, France and Denmark and were below 25% in Portugal, Bulgaria and Poland, and on average workers went to work on 39% of the days they felt sick (Schnabel, IZA World of Labor, 2022).
- Sick pay levels change absence. When Germany cut statutory sick pay from 100% to 80% in 1996, employees with up to 5.5 absence days a year reduced them by about 12%, and effects were about twice as large in industries that actually applied the cut. The authors conclude that most of the cost saving came from lower pay rather than from less absence (Ziebarth and Karlsson, Journal of Public Economics, 2010).
- But sick pay also keeps contagious people at home. Pichler and Ziebarth (Journal of Public Economics, 2017) show that sick pay makes contagious employees stay at home but also lets some non-contagious employees shirk; using US data, they find that flu rates decrease after employees gain access to paid sick leave.
- Presenteeism has later costs. Presenteeism is associated with a higher risk of future sickness absence and worse self-reported health, and restrictive absence policies are linked to more presenteeism. It is still unknown whether presenteeism is more costly overall than absence (Schnabel, 2022).
The balanced reading: a more generous policy will probably increase short absences somewhat, but cutting pay to discourage absence also brings sick, sometimes contagious, people into work. The outcome depends on design: who manages absence, how short spells are tracked and whether long-term cases get early support.
Newer European evidence points the same way. Marvin Reuter, Junior Professor of Sociology of Work and Health at the University of Bamberg, linked data on almost 20,000 employees in 35 countries to national sick pay rules, and his summary is a useful counterweight to proposals to cut sick pay:
Marvin ReuterJunior Professor for Sociology, esp. Work and Health, University of Bamberg
Yet these discussions often overlook the opposite behaviour: sickness presenteeism (going to work despite being ill). […] We found that employees in countries with more generous statutory sick pay were less likely to engage in sickness presenteeism when ill. Moreover, sick pay regulations explained a considerable part of the cross-national differences in presenteeism behaviour. […] The findings highlight that debates about sick pay should not only consider absenteeism, but also the often-overlooked costs of presenteeism.
Enhanced Sick Pay in Job Ads: TalentUp Data 2026
0.5%
of job ads advertise enhanced or company sick pay
1.7%
in the UK and in Ireland, the only markets above 1%
21
ads out of about 103,000 checked in 11 countries mention “unlimited sick days”
Source: TalentUp job postings database, January–September 2026, about 92,000 sampled employer ads in 10 countries.
Sick pay is one of the least advertised benefits. Across a random sample of about 92,000 job ads with a full description in 10 countries, only 0.5% mention company sick pay above the statutory minimum. The UK and Ireland stand out, where “company sick pay”, “enhanced sick pay” and “sick pay scheme” are common items in benefits lists.
| Country |
Ads advertising enhanced sick pay (2026) |
Sample (n) |
Typical wording |
| United Kingdom |
1.7% |
~9,100 |
Company sick pay, enhanced sick pay, occupational sick pay |
| Ireland |
1.7% |
~10,900 |
Sick pay scheme, enhanced sick pay, paid sick leave |
| Poland |
0.5% |
~4,300 |
Paid sick leave, often for B2B contractors, mostly in English |
| Portugal |
0.4% |
~12,100 |
Paid sick days, mostly English-language tech ads |
| Spain |
0.2% |
~10,300 |
100% del salario en caso de baja médica, 100% paid sick leave |
| Germany |
0.2% |
~7,800 |
Krankengeldzuschuss, Zuschuss zum Krankengeld |
| France |
0.1% |
~11,600 |
Maintien de salaire en cas d’arrêt maladie |
| Netherlands |
under 0.1% |
~11,600 |
Full sick pay, 100% salary for the first months |
| Belgium |
under 0.1% |
~4,000 |
Paid sick leave |
| Sweden |
0.0% |
~10,400 |
No matches |
The pattern follows the statutory floor. Where statutory sick pay is low (a flat SSP rate in the UK), company sick pay is a selling point. Where it is already high or long (100% for six weeks in Germany, 70% for two years in the Netherlands, 80% in Sweden), employers rarely mention it. “Unlimited sick days” is almost absent: the 21 ads come from fewer than ten employers, mostly international tech companies.
The Cost of Enhanced Sick Pay: an Illustrative Model
The cost of a top-up is the gap between statutory pay and full salary, multiplied by the days covered, plus employer social contributions on the top-up where they apply. The examples below are illustrative: round salaries, simplified daily rates and one absence episode, not market data or tax advice.
| Country (illustrative salary) |
Top-up for a 5-day absence |
Top-up for a longer absence |
What drives the cost |
| UK (£36,400, 5-day week: £140 a day) |
About £577 (5 days × £115 gap over SSP of £24.65 a day) |
About £2,300 for 4 weeks |
SSP is a low flat rate |
| Spain (€36,500: about €100 a calendar day) |
About €380 (days 1–3 at 100%, days 4–5 at 40%) |
About €1,230 for 30 days |
Unpaid days 1–3 and the 60% rate to day 20 |
| France (about €3,650 a month: about €120 a calendar day, 1+ year seniority) |
About €670 for a 7-day absence (days 1–3 at 100%, days 4–7 above the €42.97 IJSS cap) |
Gap narrows from day 8 when the statutory employer complement starts |
Waiting days and the IJSS cap |
| Germany |
€0: the employer already pays 100% for six weeks |
Krankengeldzuschuss only from week 7 |
Cost limited to long-term cases |
Two lessons follow. First, the same policy wording, “full pay from day one”, costs very different amounts in different countries, so multinational policies need country-level costing. Second, most of the risk sits in long absences, which is why employers usually cap the company top-up in time and insure the long tail. To model your own exposure, multiply the daily gap by your historical number of absence episodes and their length, by country and employee group.
How to Design a Sick Leave Policy: Safeguards That Work
An enhanced policy works best when generosity comes with clear rules and good management. These are the design choices that matter most:
- Define the enhancement precisely. State the pay level, the start day and the maximum duration of the company top-up (for example, 100% for 13 weeks per rolling 12 months), and what happens afterwards.
- Set evidence rules within the law. Allow self-certification for short absences where national law permits, and require medical evidence for longer absences or recurrent short ones.
- Track patterns, not people. Use absence data to spot frequent short spells and team hotspots, and respond with a conversation about health and workload, not automatic sanctions.
- Plan return to work. Keep in touch during long absences, offer phased returns and reasonable adjustments, and involve occupational health early. In the Netherlands reintegration is a legal duty for employer and employee.
- Cover mental health explicitly. Treat mental ill health like physical illness in the policy, and link it to an employee assistance programme and the wider wellbeing strategy.
- Protect health data. Under the GDPR, data concerning health is a special category (Article 9). Collect the minimum needed, usually dates and fitness for work rather than diagnoses, restrict access to HR and occupational health, and set retention periods.
- Insure the long tail. Group income protection or prévoyance contracts cover long-term illness more predictably than an open-ended company promise.
- Measure the impact. Compare absence rate, average spell length, long-term cases, retention and engagement scores before and after the change, by country and employee group.
Equal Treatment and Pay Transparency
Company sick pay is not just a perk: for equal-pay purposes it is pay. In Rinner-Kühn (C-171/88) the EU Court of Justice held that continued payment of wages during illness falls within the concept of pay, and that excluding part-time workers, who were mostly women, could be indirect sex discrimination unless objectively justified.
The EU Pay Transparency Directive (2023/970) defines pay as the basic wage or salary plus any other consideration, in cash or in kind, that a worker receives directly or indirectly. The transposition deadline was 7 June 2026, and its obligations apply through national laws once transposed. Where they apply, employers need objective, gender-neutral criteria for pay, burden of proof shifts to the employer in equal-pay disputes, and pay-gap reporting starts from 7 June 2027 for employers with 150 or more workers (yearly for 250+, every three years for 150–249) and from 7 June 2031 for those with 100–149. If a reported gap of 5% or more is unexplained and not remedied within six months, a joint pay assessment is required.
For sick leave policy this means: apply the same rules to full-time and part-time staff, justify any seniority or grade thresholds, and document why different employee groups receive different sick pay. Treat sick pay as part of the total benefits package you benchmark and explain, alongside base pay. For the wider compliance picture, see our guide to preparing for the EU Pay Transparency Directive, and use TalentUp’s methodology or the European Salary Benchmark Report to make sure a generous sick leave policy is backed by competitive pay.
Sources
- TalentUp. Job postings database, January–September 2026: random samples of about 92,000 employer job ads in 10 countries (see methodology above).
- UK Government. Statutory Sick Pay (SSP), SSP eligibility and Taking sick leave. GOV.UK.
- Acas. Statutory sick pay changes 2026.
- Germany. Entgeltfortzahlungsgesetz §3, §4 and §5; SGB V §47 and §48. Gesetze im Internet.
- France. Arrêt maladie : indemnités journalières et maintien de salaire. Service-Public.fr.
- Spain. Real Decreto Legislativo 8/2015, Ley General de la Seguridad Social, arts. 169 and 173. BOE. Ministerio de Trabajo, La incapacidad temporal en España.
- Netherlands. Sick pay and Reintegration obligations. Business.gov.nl (Netherlands Enterprise Agency).
- Sweden. Sjuklön. Försäkringskassan.
- Schnabel, C. (2022). Presenteeism at the workplace. IZA World of Labor 495, based on the European Working Conditions Survey 2015.
- Ziebarth, N. R. and Karlsson, M. (2010). A natural experiment on sick pay cuts, sickness absence, and labor costs. Journal of Public Economics 94, 1108–1122.
- Pichler, S. and Ziebarth, N. R. (2017). The pros and cons of sick pay schemes: Testing for contagious presenteeism and noncontagious absenteeism behavior. Journal of Public Economics 156, 14–33.
- European Union. Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (GDPR), Article 9. EUR-Lex.
- European Union. Directive (EU) 2023/970 on pay transparency. EUR-Lex.
- Court of Justice of the EU. Case C-171/88, Rinner-Kühn v FWW Spezial-Gebäudereinigung. EUR-Lex.