Duvet-Days! Ever heard of these? It′s a scheme that was popular in the USA a few years back. In it, employees were allocated a number of days where they were entitled to call in and not turn up for work without having to give any reason. They could just stay home in bed, under their duvet, hence the name. I remember it because a company I was working for decided to implement a similar scheme in an attempt to combat absenteeism. Prior to the scheme, employees were trusted to manage their own attendance and any persistently absent members of staff should have been dealt with individually by their line-manager. The average number of sick-days taken the previous year per-employee was calculated and this was allotted as the duvet-day quota for each employee. The employees were to use the duvet-days whenever they felt unable or unwilling to come into work, for whatever reason, remembering, of course, that they need not give a reason. Once the duvet-days were used up, any further absenteeism