AIBU to think too many people being off work is causing the country to fall apart?

@Tanyasfootspa

well if you'd just reverse the negative impact my strokes have had on me I'd happily go back to going to work 'rain or shine' as I did for over 35 years.

🙄🙄🙇🏻‍♀️🙇🏻‍♀️

I have the ultimate unskilled job - I stack shelves in a supermarket overnight. I don't think people may realise we have targets and our speed etc is closely monitored. I am not fast enough and it's an utterly soul-destroying experience, and it really affects my mental health. I had a breakdown last year and was signed off for 2 months (burnt out from 4 autistic kids plus the job).

We're also chronically understaffed and there's usually one colleague signed off for 1 month plus. Usually because of health issues caused by the work (knees/back/shoulders). There's no light duties alternative, so there's no choice but to get signed off.

I probably gave a bad example, but DH had a UTI a few months ago. You apparently need to see a GP for treatment for UTIs in men. It was impossible to get in with our GP in a meaningful time frame so ended up getting treatment from my private medical insurance - but not everyone has that option.

Having just checked, a pharmacist can’t deal with a chest infection either - there are seven specific illnesses they can prescribe antibiotics for. Anything else and you need a GP.

I’ve just been signed off sick. I’ve been working 60 hour weeks (paid for 35 hours) alongside my team, yet getting constantly berated for not meeting deadlines or doing work quickly enough. As a result everyone is on the edge and showing signs of stress. The bosses view is that we are lazy. I often see managers on here who also treat their staff with contempt. If you want low sickness first step is to treat employees like human beings.

Likely.
Number of economically inactive people due to long-term sickness in the United Kingdom from 1st quarter 2000 to 1st quarter 2025.

At the beginning of 2020, the number was the same as 2010. You can see what's happened since then.

Also possible that the dip between 2009 to 2019 reflects better population health before Conservative cuts to services (2010 onwards) really kicked in, but I have insufficient data to examine that.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1388245/uk-sick-leave-figures

As others have said, I think in many cases it’s down to cost cutting, budgetary constraints and long term underinvestment!

Much of this isn’t new, for years you’ve had to sit on phone calls to companies or organisations, waiting to talk to someone, whilst being told they’re experiencing ‘exceptionally high call volumes’ and that ‘your call is important’. None of that is new, has been the case for years! Unless of course you’re looking to buy something or cancel a membership and then they seem to be able to fast track their call handling. 🙄😵‍💫

i work for a council, and our team has been whittled down and whittled down over many years. In our wider workforce, two of our assistant directors have recently left, and their workloads have been added to another AD’s. And these are staff with big, specialist jobs and loads of people to look after. So it’s no wonder services are shot and waiting times are long. People have masses to do and are under often unrelenting pressure.

finally, i do think as well that people are maybe less willing to battle on and come into work when they’re ill, which sometimes was the case pre COVID. And that’s not a bad thing; people spreading illness around an office isn’t something to be celebrated.

Never heard of this except for UTI

I mean, pharmacists would be absolutely booked up with that all day. Do you live in the UK?

One poster mentioned her group in their late 60s - I don't expect anyone to be working in their late 60s so I don't know how much that factors into workforce planning.

A couple of posters have mentioned the economically inactive over 50s who are relying on savings till pension age comes, and not claiming benefits. This is one thing I mentioned in 2020 on here and I was told the numbers were too small for anybody to care.

I'm not criticising any of those people. I hope to be one! I just thought it needed a bit of planning from a workforce perspective. Because I thought it was screamingly obvious that such people would stop working as soon as possible in 2019.. and then lockdowns etc broke the social contract so I think a chunk of those people who were considering staying in work decided not to.

I think it came up on here just as I attended an event about it. I'm not in that age group even now but it was interesting to attend- I knew the organiser.

The chair was bonkers and basically just shouted a lot about how everyone has a moral obligation to work if they can. Didn't listen to any ideas about how to keep that group in work.

But when I mentioned it on here, I did say it's probably more common amongst people without children and I certainly got told off here because apparently being child free and able to retire after 50 is a tiny and a irrelevant number of people. I don't know what the statistics are myself.

There will of course be others who do have children - but can afford it because they saved a chunk of their big salaries or they inherited etc etc.

I do wonder if any organisations or any government factors that in. Whenever you read any finance journalism, it always tells you that you need X amount of money in retirement and bases it on things like regular meals out on holidays. Anyone who subscribes to a FIRE kind of mentality is likely to be sacrificing those things in the first place. I'm not gonna go after them when I retire. I remember David Cameron asking us to go out and spend for the good of the economy. Nope. Why would I buy things I don't need? Sorry, I digress.

No loan car needed , but its a real shame young people coming out of school / college don't want to take up a career in this .
He takes someone on and all they do is to stand outside on their phone or won't work the extra 30 minutes to get the job finished .

Can you blame them for putting themselves first. The industry I am in has just made a lot of redundancies, many of them the 'go above and beyond' types. We're just numbers in the end.
There's a saying, put your own life jacket on first.
I will always put my health and my family above an employer, but I will do my job well when I can.

I work in that industry. We book months ahead especially for loan cars, I would say it’s 8 weeks notice if you need a car if not more
but we ring customers to tell them their service is due, they all say oh not yet, I’ll book it in closer to the time, and then complain we can’t get them in (I do tell them to book now…)

NHS queues? Disability?
I’ve been waiting over 18 months for an operation, my sickness is awful
absolutely nothing I can do about it
and if they’re messing with PIP and wanting disabled people to work more then there is going to be more sickness

I think if places were staffed properly and fully, you wouldn't notice the ones off sick as much, and the services would function well. Too many jobs are down to the bare minimum staff, and lots on temporary contracts.
You can't blame people for being off when they are ill.

I agree but think most of it is genuine sickness. We are an office of around ten people in our fifties and early sixties and there are only two of us who have not been off long term sick over the past year or so. One has had a stroke , then other health issues and now bedbound, two have had major spinal surgery with months off, one with cancer, another's husband was seriously ill so she was off. there have been two or three of us regularly turning up and keeping things going but it cannot be helped. The problem is no-one is really working. I see all my ex nursing collegues all retiring or severely reducing hours mid fifties when they get their big pension lump sums. I don't blame them I'll be doing the same when I can at 60 ( no longer NHS ). Out of my group of about eight friends all in our late sixties, 2 have fully retired, 2 now very part time. there are only a couple left working full time. I probably also see a skewed picture of late fifties/ early sixties as I work in benefits but there seems to be so many people with just neither of them working any more and loads claiming. I can see how the benefits bill is completely unsustainable because so fe working to pay for it all.

I got antibiotics prescribed by a pharmacist last year in the UK. No appointment needed, just turned up. A few minutes in the consultation room then she wrote and processed the prescription in one. Is that service not available across the whole country?

This is spot on, I think. People get ill when they’re overworked and under-supported. When you have the same workload but you’ve cut your headcount then the remaining staff are more susceptible to stress-related illness.

I disagree with the idea that not taking sick days willy nilly is ‘martyring yourself’, however. I’m in a job where taking any time off increases my workload upon my return as the work piles up (everyone else is too busy to take any of it on / they wouldn’t be able to as I have the client relationship) so there’s a huge disincentive to taking a day off for minor illness. I’m not saying that’s right, but that’s the way it is in some jobs and at certain levels of seniority.

There's a recruitment freeze in my council. Where's your evidence that the public sector workforce is ballooning?

A lot of the problems are caused by cuts to staff/hours and not replacing them when they leave. Both in the private and public sectors. Not only does it mean that there’s no sickness/holiday cover but that the staff who are left are spread so thin they too get ill more often and have to take time off.

A few years ago my colleagues and I were all given a pay rise. Great. Except as our regional manager as they left declared that “you better all work like you deserve that pay rise”. It was about 40p above minimum wage. Not the best way to retain staff or get the most out of them: implying you think they already don’t work hard enough and expecting them to be grateful for being paid. I think attitudes like that are doing a lot of damage to the work force. I know it’s not only where I work who are getting pissed off either.

Bound to be worse in the Public Sector. Poor pay, crap managers, little or no incentive. All or nothing approach to sickness (if you're going to be off unwell, you might as well do it for two weeks as for two days as it will be counted as one episode). I work in the NHS. Would I work harder if I knew I'd get a bonus? Maybe not (I think I work bloody hard). But if I knew I was going to get a % or 10k bonus for going the extra mile when I feel crap, would I? Yep, you bet I would!

If you follow abscences for ill health in the BHS with leak of Covid etc… they match exactly.

Yes more people are ill.
Thats because there’s more illnesses around 🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️

Cleaning the air would solve a lot of that.

The work week is also reducing with unions pushing for 35 hours to be the new full time. I’m not opposed to this but could potentially lead to shorter business hours. Trying to get to the bank actually is quite hard for me these days, it barely seems open.

Everywhere is pretty much running on skeleton staff to "save costs". There has been so much cost cutting that now there is no resilience in the system for when people are ill. My old job, pre Covid had 8 full time members of staff, they now have 1 full time member of staff and 2 part time on a job share, the workload has not changed, they are now expected to do the same work 8 people did with 2 people. There is also an overtime ban and a ban on hiring temp staff (seasonal industry). Unsurprisingly there is more sickness than 5 years ago. I went to our local bakery (small local chain) and the ladies in there were saying due to increase in NI and wages their hours have now been cut and so the bakery will now open 8.30-1.30 every day instead of 8-4. It puts pressure on their set up and pack down. One of the ladies was looking for a second job to make up lost pay.

Also…conversely … there are plenty of people to my knowledge who are fit and healthy and over fifty-five … who are looking for full or p/t work, who never get an interview because of the age barrier.

I thought of myself as resilient too, OP, until I wasn’t.

Be thankful you’re well enough to complain about it from your end of the telescope.

Anyone can get a serious health condition any time. A civilised society looks after the less able.

Most of us public sector employees are not off sick or pretending to work while holidaying in Spain. The real issue is that there isn’t enough money to hire sufficient staff. A few team members are on parental leave, some have retired, and we’re not allowed to hire replacements. So the remaining staff have to take on their workload. On top of that, more and more tasks are being assigned to us that aren't part of our core responsibilities.

Here’s a non-work example from football. Previously, we just had to inform our local FA that we were playing, book the field, and once the game ended, we were done because the referee recorded the score. This season, it's completely different: we signed up for the league, booked the pitch and referees, and now we have to complete a player sheet before each game. We also have to email the opposing team about the schedule and when we’ll hand over the locker room key. The keys, held at the council office, can’t be picked up until three hours before the game—and only during office hours. During the match, we’re required to record events live in an app. Afterwards, we have to return the keys to the council office’s drop box.

This kind of situation is happening at work too, more and more is being added to our plates. We don’t have a recruitment problem. The last time we had an open position, 300 people applied. But we’re under a hiring freeze.

Another issue is the expectation that one person should do everything. It would be far more effective to divide tasks so that people who aren’t 100% healthy could still contribute. Imagine a grocery store with only one employee working—handling everything alone is overwhelming. But instead of splitting the role between two people (for example, assigning some tasks to someone with mental health challenges), we’d rather pay benefits.

When someone can’t perform all their duties, there’s no system in place to reassign them to alternative tasks. It’s just easier to have them go off sick than to adapt their role. Also, training in every job I’ve had has been poor. It’s usually assigned to someone without removing any of their existing responsibilities, so they can’t give it proper attention.

I am surprised no one has mentioned this yet, but how about people wearing masks if they are unwell, and have to go out in public? I am an AHP, and have had to take 6 days off in the last two months, due to unwell patients coughing all over me, and giving me their illnesses. Then, as a result, all my scheduled patients on those days, have had to have appointments cancelled and rescheduled due to my non-availability. This has pushed those people on my waiting list back even further. All for the loss of a horseshoe nail.