For the self-employed, the ''sickie'' is something of an alien concept. Don't turn up for work and you don't get paid. Catch flu and get the double up with a cut in income. Take a holiday, and the loss of earnings doubles the cost of travel.

It could give you more than a slightly jaundiced view of a British Airways pay deal which effectively recognises a certain amount of

''sickness'' at work as a part of the modern employment pattern and has to be reduced by a cash bribe. Especially when the company in question appears to have been operating at twice the normal average sickness rates. Like the Royal Mail and some police forces, sickness at work seems to have deteriorated into a cynics' charter with self-certification allowing a week's grace before a GP

needs to be involved in the assessment process.

On the other side of the coin, firms like Tesco, who have chosen to take a tougher line, now stand accused of penalising employees with genuine ailments who may face the prospect of losing three days' pay if they take to their bed for the same period during a working week. A similar tactic creeping into negotiations is taking sick days out of holiday entitlement, with the corresponding carrot being additional holidays and benefits for perfect attendance. So how have we got ourselves into a crazy state where the ill might struggle unwisely to work in some employment sectors, while in others the fly guys skilfully play the system, putting added strain on more responsible colleagues?

The irony is that the UK in general has to put in longer working hours than most of its continental European partners. Arguably, that long-hours culture has contributed to the stresses and strains which provoke unscheduled absences. Neither is it just a blue collar/service sector phenomenon, as many people have been quick to suggest. It's certainly true that people in unvarying, tedious jobs are more likely to seek some kind of diversion to interfere with the monotony.

Long years ago, a Swedish car firm tried to address this by having small teams assemble whole cars, rather than employees repetitively adding one particular component. The rise of sophisticated robotic machinery building cars on assembly lines inevitably largely killed off that enlightened innovation. But there is still plenty of scope for employers to recognise the human need to express individuality wherever possible, and, conversely, to enjoy a sense of collective responsibility towards a common goal. A cog in a corporate wheel is unlikely to care much about taking a couple of days out.

The guys who trained for weary hours every day for four years for a six-minute chance of Olympic glory in the Athens coxless fours had very little glamour in their lives until that impossibly sweet moment of triumph, collecting gold at Lake Schinias.

Oarsman James Cracknell's wife said he hadn't had two consecutive days off throughout the years of preparation. As part of a close-knit interdependent team, there could be no question of ducking out because

you didn't quite feel up to it. No question of a Monday morning hangover at all for that matter, since convivial nights and athletic days simply don't mix.

It's difficult, of course, to replicate that degree of motivation and commitment when you're checking income tax returns rather than lusting after a life-changing medal. But part of the answer has to be finding ways to imbue more mundane jobs with the kind of flexibility routinely now enjoyed by the laptop generation of workers.

An increasing number of jobs can now be done in out-of-office, which gives employees opportunities to shape their days in ways unheard of a decade ago. That has long been the upside of a sometimes precarious life for those of us who work for ourselves. In essence you design

your own working week; a process often informed by the weather

forecast . . . getting through a pile of

work when the heavens open, but allowing yourself time to smell the roses when the sun shines. That degree of freedom is difficult to offer check-in staff for whom shift patterns are one fact of life it would be difficult to alter.

Elsewhere in British industry and commerce it's perfectly possible to move from an obsession with how many hours people spend behind a desk or a counter to a mindset where what matters is that certain goals and tasks are accomplished by a certain time.

There is, however, a rogue factor in this debate, which is loosely about temperament. Every one of us knows someone who thinks it little more than a bit of a lark to take as much time out of the daily grind as it's possible to get away with; and to do so apparently untroubled by anything as irritating as a bad conscience. At the other end of the spectrum is the professional martyr who cannot see that working all the hours God sends, regardless of contractual obligation, is bad for their health, and, probably, if they are in a position of responsibility, the health of most folks near them.

People in that mould spread guilt thickly around them, raising inquiring eyebrows if colleagues commit the unpardonable sin of leaving their desk at the appointed hour. In their fashion, the workaholics are just as culpable for absence rates as the chronically workshy.

The other disease they spread is often fear, a fast track to stress for those concerned: people worried that not putting in an equal number of unsociable hours is to risk their

livelihood. The healthiest people around are those who work for

companies that recognise that every single employee is just that - an

individual with a normal human

need for recognition, and a normal human aspiration to earn a decent reward for decent effort and where genuine illness excites sympathy rather than immediate suspicion. That ethos usually comes from the top.

The CBI, understandably vocal this past couple of weeks on the subject of sickness rates, might care to run a health check on some of the country's chief executives. How many of them lift their eyes from the share price long enough to ponder the kind of company they run? How many of them relate absence to quality of working life?

This last week, having my own life enhanced by Edinburgh and all its festivals, I found myself sitting next to a female executive of a major bank. She had joined her current company, she told me, because she wanted to work with a CEO whose attitude

to staff and customers she really admired. I didn't inquire, but I

suspect that particular employee wouldn't remember when she last woke up wondering if she could be bothered going to work.