Workplace sickness Flu/Covid attendance

[Brrrrrrrrrrrr]

I’ve noticed an uptick in threads about Covid/ flu/ the viruses which are everywhere at the moment and I’m wondering if others have noticed a shift at work with sickness frequency and the impacts on productivity. I’m in a fairly small team of 16-20 and since the start of summer there’s been a constant stream of everyone being ill every month or two, not just summer colds or regular flu but quite severe cases of being bed ridden, fevers, hacking horrible coughs and so on. It’s become so common that it’s now the norm to come into work quite sick but also to call in sick often too. It’s at the point where a few colleagues have had letters of concern sent home due to their increasing absences which I do believe are genuine.

Right now it sounds like a Covid ward in the office with hacking coughs and sneezing left right and centre. Those with many absences are now petrified to have time off but are actually coming in to work very sick which obviously infects everyone else and hampers their recovery. It’s like a miserable never ending cycle that I really don’t remember being normal before covid.

Is this situation happening elsewhere? It feels grim and to be honest it’s affecting morale and the confidence of once strong team members across all ages.

If anyone works in HR or Payroll have you noticed a measurable increase in absences aside from Covid itself? Is this being discussed by the professional bodies as an ongoing issue yet? Companies are going to have to adapt their policies towards absences if this continues otherwise the disciplinary proceedings will be never ending.

People are just coming in with it in my workplace

We can't have everyone off sick for a bad cold!!

School attendance at the start of December was as low as it was at the same time last year at the start of the Omicron wave, over 10% of pupils off.

An awful lot of sickness absence. www.tes.com/magazine/news/general/school-absence-rates-illness-pupil-covid

But the thing is it’s not just a ‘bad cold’- they’re stooping over with hacking coughs and have fevers and chills, a never ending stream of snot, not to mention extreme lethargy- it’s cruel to watch them suffering whilst trying to soldier on. It’s also every few weeks, a few just can’t seem to shift it before it comes back again.

We’re noticing something similiar - although exacerbated maybe by wfh.

Rather than people actually taking time off they feel they’re well enough to wfh - so it just drags on rather than say taking two days and actually recovering properly. And then they may have a couple of days here and there because they’re too sick to wfh because they haven’t actually rested - so that goes down as two separate incidences even though it’s the same illness. That then starts to trigger letters.

my manager has started implementing a policy of if you aren’t well enough to come to the office then you probably aren’t well enough to wfh so please don’t. It’s not been in place long enough to know if it will make a difference but people do seem to actually be taking sick leave properly.

We are heading to spring now, it will be over soon

I'm not seeing this level of illness where I work and we are FULL of germs

People are just taking over the counter meds and getting through it. It's grim yes, but it's part and parcel of winter

This was always going to happen after a pandemic and lockdowns. Our immune systems went into holiday mode where people weren't mixing - now life is back to normal, we're all much more susceptible to picking things up.

I agree on the work from home issue. I work in a firm where wfh is really common and easy, but the downside is people are wfh when they could really do with some rest. So it’s good in terms of not passing it around, but bad in terms of their health.

Same where I work. No one bringing germs and viruses into the office, but constant reminders needed to ensure people who are poorly actually rest up instead of working. I guess that’s the downside of working from home. (Plus 99%of my colleagues who are supposed to be on leave this week are checking emails and responding!)

If only we could all work from home to keep ourselves germ free!!!

I've noticed every other person on the train seems to be coughing/sneezing/got a bad cold. Noticeably more than last year.

Last week there was a guy behind me on the training, and I could hear from his breathing/sniffing he sounded awful with a really heavy cold. I was torn between being sympathetic that he was obviously still going to work and dread that I was about a metre away from him! Have escaped it so far though

Respectfully, I disagree with you. We’re 3 years in to this now- the last proper lockdown was over a year and a half ago during which most people were still mixing to some degree and getting sick with ‘flu’ Covid and god knows what else. Your comment makes it sound like we’ve been living in continual isolation which most definitely was not the case.

People are getting sick but their immune system doesn’t seem to recover fully before they’re sick again- something doesn’t seem right to me and I don’t understand why more people aren’t speaking out about it instead of dismissing it as normal and to just get on with it.

Because life does have to go on

How are you expecting us to cope with the news coming out of China? People will resist another lockdown.

Why is it always 'lockdown' that certain people jump to when it comes to mitigating disease spread?

Why not improving ventilation? Or vaccination?

I said 'lockdown' when referring to what's going on in China because it's talking about going back to square one! If that was aimed at me!

I work mostly from home and am in the office once a week but it seems like someone on my local office team has been off every day for weeks; often several people. There's a lot of it going round!

I've just taken 5 days off with Covid, and if it wasn't the Christmas break now it might have been more. Tried to WFH on day 3 but lasted 90 mins before going back to bed for the rest of the day. I agree that WFH sets the bar for being ill higher, and sometimes that's ok on those marginal days when you're nearly better/only a bit ill, but it does make it harder to figure out when you can be off & I know I felt pressure (from myself really) to be back sooner.

I think I probably caught it on 10th Dec at a choir thing; would have gone into the office on the 15th and spread it as at that point I was feeling fine, just slight cough, except for freezing temperatures stopping all the trains!

Did you mean to post it on the thread about flights from China?

@noblegiraffe no I did not

OP it is exactly the same in my office, the sickness policy is so draconian that people daren't be off sick. We had to pretty much 'bully' someone into going home yesterday. (Flexi time, after core hours, no reason to be there).

It is a reflection of how the company views its staff.

I’d like to see it as normal to wear masks when you have a cold etc to limit the germs spread. I’ve caught a cold from people I worked with and whilst they were well enough to work, I’ve had a week in bed and still struggling. Dh has it from me and isn’t much better.
I’m freelance so lost a weeks wages too.

People at my work are pretty much forced back to work even when unwell.