How sick do you need to be to call in sick to work?

[Nomoreafterthisone]

Just that really.

Does it change your answer if you work from home?

What stops you calling in sick?

Our office prefers not to have people in the office with bad colds. Most of us can wfh in these circumstances. If it’s a tummy bug then I’d also say work from home or be off sick

If I don’t work I don’t get paid.

It’s that simple.

I go to work.

Extremely. I'm a teacher. It is often easier to go in 9-3 and collapse afterwards than to be off. Then need a week to recover in the holidays.

I’m nhs….we just call an automated sick line ….that’s it ….no midering from any managers

I can work from home.

I'd only call in sick if I was physically too unwell to work which pretty much never happens. I wfh through coughs and colds.

I can wfh whenever I want/need to, and I do that without hesitation if I’ve got a cold. As can everyone else I work with, so when people do go to the office with a cold, tbh it really pisses me off- it’s just selfish, pointless martyrdom.

It’s quite rare now that I feel so ill I have to call in sick- I’ve done it twice since 2020. This is a direct result of the change in culture that means people no longer drag themselves in when they shouldn’t. I used to have probably three colds a year bad enough to need a couple of days in bed, now it’s less than one a year because I have far less exposure to ill people. I don’t remember ever needing time off sick for anything else.

I'll call in sick if I'm sick enough that it would impact my ability to do the job, or if working would make me sicker/drags out my recovery.
Aside from a few weeks when I had covid, I have only had a handful of sick days in the last 8 years.
I will work from home if I have anything contagious like a cold.

I'm very envious of people who have the option to WFH with regard to being able to adapt working arrangements when unwell. I teach primary and it is the absolute pits to stand at the front of a class trying to deliver engaging lessons, managing behaviour and freezing out on the playground for PE when feeling really rubbish. Our HT and non-teaching SLT can be a bit "Look at me, absolutely hanging but hey, still here ‐we're all in the same boat!" which is demoralising, as they can make a Lemsip, shut the office door and just crack on with desk jobs for the day.

Yes, I feel very sorry for people in this position. And of course you get sick more, because you’re surrounded by the little disease vectors all day every day. I think they should take it into account when planning staffing levels, tbh, so you don’t end up under so much pressure to perpetuate the situation. I realise that’s so far off the current reality it’s not even funny.

Sore throat, sniffles, head cold, I work from home. Mild headache or other pain - take a couple of painkillers & carry on. Why? Because I have a target & a stack of work to do, and I don't want to fall behind.

I really only take time off when I am physically incapable of work - falling asleep or have a blinding migraine (very rare).

I worked all through chemo & radiotherapy, preferring to be busy because the distraction meant I worried less.

We largely WFH at my work so far fewer sick days now. Sometimes if people aren't feeling great, they will join the most important call of the day and go back to bed for the rest of the day.

I'm debating this currently. Have either a bad cold or flu; constantly coughing and blowing nose, losing voice, ache all over, headache and generally lightheaded. I feel better as day goes on so I managed to take the dog out, although this was necessity rather than choice. I work in hospitality and shift tomorrow is long and I'm with customers all day, no choice to stay "behind scenes". I know I will struggle tomorrow, I could struggle through it and my team will really struggle to cover me tomorrow as only a few can do my role.

Difficult call, as I can work from home easily but my job requires concentration and making fairly difficult calls at times.

If I have a temperature (rare) I know I won't function well enough for my decisions to be reliable, so that is a sick day. Same if I am ill enough that I have to stay in bed.

The tricky area is when I feel I can sit up but not for the whole day and then it depends on what I have to do. If a couple of urgent things, I will get those done then do admin or training with laptop in bed and clock off at 5 on the dot. But it has happened before that I misjudged my ability to get through the day and had colleagues suggest I should return to bed and take the day off

Was full of cold and bad chest other week. Was due to wfh. First day I cldnt even face that although did do some emails later on. Next day I did a couple if hours. Luckily it was the weekend then. I don't think I would have gone in it was in the office.

I don't get sick pay so if I'm off I'm usually choosing my coffin.

I think the only thing that stops me wfh is a headache or sickness bug.

On the other hand I would call in sick to work if I had a bad cough/cold to avoid spreading it to others.

I work from home 3 out of 4 days and average 1 sick day a year, almost always headache.

I have to be fairly ill to stay off, we are all in broad agreement about what constitutes too ill to go in (small workplace). If I couldn't stop coughing I'd stay off even if I felt well enough otherwise. D&V = stay off. Mild cough/cold = go in. We have private offices and can wear masks in meetings. No one else does my work if I'm not there, it has just taken me three weeks to catch up with a week off at the start of March.

While I could in theory WFH for the odd day (I don't normally) unless I felt ill before leaving work the day before I wouldn't have my laptop at home so that wouldn't be possible.

I don't have to call in sick, as DH and I have our own business, but generally I carry on doing most of my usual tasks unless I am firing out of both ends or bedbound with pain/fever.

I don’t go anywhere near the office if I’m sick- my boss has a chronic illness and she could become seriously unwell from a cold, so I work from home if I feel a bit ropey.

I call in sick maybe once or twice a year- more since the kids have been in childcare/school.

I have young children who enjoy sneezing into my open mouth, so I seem to catch every bug going.

Better taking a day or two off, getting a proper rest and giving yourself a chance to get over it rather than soldiering on and feeling like shit for a week or more. I’ve witnessed enough redundancy situations to see that there’s no prizes for prioritising the needs of the business over your health.

Appreciate that not everyone has company sick pay or can afford to lose a day’s wages, which is a huge contributing issue.

I'm self-employed so vomiting or unable to get out of bed, really. But I work alone and outdoors so I'm not much of an infection risk.

I work on the food service industry, so I absolutely would call on sick with a cold, no one wants their server sneezing over their food 🤷‍♀️ but if I worked in an office, I'd go in. I think it depends what your job is, and what illness you have.

I do a fairly physical job, so I call in sick if I know I won't be up to it. Sometimes I'll let my boss know I'm not 100% and leave it up to him - usually he won't want me in doing 90% of full capacity, but sometimes he can tell me it's a light day and I'll be ok. Works well.

My head has to be hanging off. I get really irritated by colleagues who take time off for colds etc. I'm not entirely sure that my attitude is that healthy tbh - but it's just totally ingrained that if you can work - you should.

I WFH. Probably taken 2-3 of days off a year since Covid (for Covid. Which always fucks me.
Although this winter it was flu, which made a change). Oh and the annual bout of Noro my kid brings home from school. Which I find similarly horrific.

But otherwise power through - though because lots of my work is about relationship management, I’ll move meetings and decline external calls as far as possible (because if I’m not well I won’t perform at my best) and concentrate on research and writing tasks or catch up on admin, that I can at least re-check for sense and coherence when I feel better!

When I was a teacher I only called in sick.of I genuinely felt bloody awful. I went 4 years and about 10 months without missing a day once.