When I was an employment lawyer I had one big employer, who at that point in my career distressed me because they actually started to performance manage their staff because they were taking the minimum entitlement in sick leave. Now, that was one of our bigger, richer employers, and it was one that actually employed a lot of men, and I wondered how much it actually encouraged a mentality in that workplace that was machismo, that treated people like they were machines. They're not machines; they're human beings, and when we employ human beings, we need to accept that they have families, that they get sick, and that they're valuable in themselves, and that they shouldn't be at work when they're sick and they shouldn't be at work when they need to stay home and look after their children. 