Why do people come to work when they are ill??!

I suspect that if your colleagues started to take time off when they were well enough to work then your employer's sickness policy might become less generous. Huge numbers of work hours would be missed if people took time off with a cold.

Unfortunately contact with people with coughs and colds is inevitable- work, transport, shopping, exercise, school etc etc.. It's not practical to expect people to stay away unless there are people with severely compromised immune systems to consider.

My sister goes in to be a martyr- she waits to see if the manager sends her home . I have told her she is ridiculous she is a grown adult who knows if she is fit for work .

i don’t have a great sickness policy - so go in if I can .So many have a cough and cold at the moment I am in the minority of those who don’t . But get why people are there.

That said in my job I get very close to patients . I was about 30 cm away from someone who continued to tell me he had whooping cough 🤷‍♂️

You can’t win. If you go in poorly everyone complains you’re spreading germs. If you call in sick, sickness management policies mean you feel guilty and possibly get a reputation for being unreliable. The NHS is awful for this!

An employer can have a very good sick leave policy when it comes to long term illness, but frequent odd days or a couple of days tend to trigger warning, especially if the employer uses the Bradford Index to calculate this.

This is a calculation bases on the number of times sick leave is taken, with a multiplier according to the typical number of days - more complex than that, but along those lines. It means if someone has say, 2 days off more than 5 times in a year, or a week 3 times in a year, they could be considered for disciplinary. This is in a rolling year rather than a fixed start or end point.

So if someone takes a day or 2 each time they have a cold, and they have a few as they are prone to them or have kits who catch everything going at school & pass it on, then they are flagged on the Bradford index.

You can't win really, I've only called into work sick about 2 times in the last three years. If I was to call in sick over every sniffle everyone would bitch and Moan about that too.
It's the same issue with school attendance. Damned if you do damned if you don't 🤷🏻‍♀️

Are you sure that's not just if you have a sick note?

I’m NHS and get the same but the NHS also has a robust sickness management policy and if you have more than 2 sickness episodes in 6 months, sickness management will be triggered!

I’ve had 3 episodes so after my recent brush with flu I went back as soon as I could. We work in a hospital filling up with people with infectious illnesses anyway so if it’s not colleagues passing things on, it’s patients coming through A&E!

That’s different to work though. You can’t take time off work every time you have a cold

We went to a family party Xmas eve. Several family members coughing and spluttering. All four of us are now ill and having to cancel the get together we planned for tomorrow because we don't want to pass it on.

You can't stay off work for a cold. Unless you are really ill you need to go to work.

Who's going to believe them when they phone in sick over the Christmas period?

If I call in sick then someone else needs to cover, which isn’t fair on the person covering.

Most work places wouldn't be happy if people go off with colds. And besides, who takes time off with a cold? Most people are perfectly able to work through. How would your workplace have coped without these 4 staff? I wouldn't stay at home with a cold tbh.

Because people have to go to work to pay their bills...not fun for anyone but not complicated

My boss would make me feel so shit if I called in to say I was ill. She’d encourage us to come in even if we weren’t 100%. It was easier just to come in sick than to call in sick.

The OP wrote that their industry has good sick leave.

@Confused228 I've no idea but it's maddening when they have the option to ring in sick or wfh.

Very few workplaces offer what yours does. Maybe ask your sick colleagues why they came to work while obviously poorly!

We have a culture of ‘keep calm and carry on’ so most people with any sort of work ethic will feel obliged to go to work if they are capable of getting through the day.

Most people are also conscious of receiving reduced pay, not keeping on top of workload, pressure that absence can put on other colleagues, previous sickness records.

If you're feeling ill today you won't have only caught it yesterday.

I've never knowingly had flu. I'd go to work with a cold, unless I'd completely lost my voice which has happened just once in my life, because I don't feel ill when I've got a cold so I would feel a bit of a fraud. I know some people who do feel ill with colds and I have no problem with them staying away if it's what their bodies are telling them to do.

Because the work still needs to be done.
Because they don't want to get a reputation for being flaky.
Because - barring a very small number of jobs with vulnerable people - there is absolutely no reason to stay at home simply because you have a cold, FFS.

Because their work policy means that taking time off impacts their payrise. Due to the stupid fucking bradford factor