How often do you take a sick day?

[Rapunzel91]

For those employed, how often do you take a sick day from work? And do you still sometimes work when ill?

Im ill all the time so tend to just work at home when I have a cold which is often. I’ve got a stomach bug today but feel like I still need to work as I took a sick day about a month ago 🤢

I think I’m ill more than the average person to be fair. Don’t know why, just seem to pick up everything 🤷‍♀️

This!!

I think a huge factor in people’s answers will also be whether They get paid when off sick or not. And the culture of the company they work for. One of my managers had a miscarriage and was off for 2/3 months. Mental health is hugely prioritised here. Thank god!!

And whether they will face a backlog of work when they get back. If it's a choice between muddling through Thursday's work when you don't feel great, or phoning in sick but then having to do Thursday's and Friday's work on Friday, when none of it can wait until Monday, phoning in sick is not the no-brainer some would have us believe.

Barely, only taken a dozen or so in my whole life and I'm in my 50's. No wfh option for most of my working life either. Unless I'm really ill I just work through it, never even considered taking time off for colds etc.

Rarely.

I tend to get a bad cold once ever three or four years. It normally takes me two days to sleep it off.

The last time I had off ill was when you legally couldn't go in with covid (but I'd have been too ill anyway). I'm lucky in that I'm rarely unwell.

I haven't had a sick day since January 2017, but I am blessed with a very strong immune system. I work hybrid and it's flexible, so if I have a cold I can WFH and not spread the germs. I won't work if I feel too unwell to be effective, it's always just sniffles.

Twice in last 8 years, but I'm part time, and can rejig my tasks if needed - which makes a big difference! And it doesn't iinclude pre-arranged medical appointments.

Couple of days a year on average. Need to be unable to get out of bed or actually vomiting / diarrhoea and hugging the toilet bowl. Have a bad back and occasionally it goes into spasm so can't physically stand up.
Wouldn't take a day off for a bad cold.

I work as a teacher and teach mainly exam classes so do my very best not to have time off. Always set suitable work for them though sometimes between vomiting !

I am
a manager that’s the issue

Last time I was off sick was when I last had Covid, either 2020 or 2021. I don’t really get ill but having the option to WFH if I have a bit of a cold is a huge help. I took a lot more days off sick before WFH was an option.

My employer will only pay a certain number of days of full occupational sick pay across 4 rolling years. After a run of serous health issues a few years ago I am now on half pay if I take a day off sick. I've had one sick day recently with norovirus. I can't afford to be on half pay regularly. We WFH 99% if the time, so I just work while feeling awful (thanks to my small child in childcare we are ill a lot!).

Even when I am not immune suppressed though "just a cold" for me makes me very weak. And for 20 years I didn't know why. So it's not necessarily someone being less tough than you if "just" a cold has them in bed. And they might not even know why. It's only developments in research and testing that mean I was diagnosed.

Wow, no wonder norovirus spreads like wildfire in hospitals

When sick. Would go in with a minor cold etc but definitely not with tummy bug or if I had a temp as would hate to pass on anyway work has ruling about d&v.

You say that but people do 🤢 anyway, if I was working from home and had d/v, I would only not work if I felt truly awful.

None in current job which I've been in for a year. In my last job I had a month off sick when my mum died, and then took a month off sick with stress when they were making me redundant (because fuck them I wasn't going in).

My dad was like that. He died of cancer aged 52 with work making his last year a misery as he dealt with what turned out to be his second bout of cancer which ended up being terminal.
I learned after that, work do not give a shit about you. No one in your family will appreciate you working yourself into the ground. I don’t take time off for nothing but I have severe asthma and if I get a chest infection it floors me. No way am I pushing through work to extend an illness.

What is your job if it is so essential? Social work? Medicine? Legal contracts? Time critical things which impact people’s lives. Because if you are just making money for a company then that doesn’t seem essential. Just inconvenient.

In the last 15 years my sick days have either been related to Covid or pregnancy (was hospitalised on and off for 8 weeks in both pg).

I never said anything about my work being essential (although I get your point and agree). I just meant that the decision to call in sick can be easier for some people if they feel a bit under the weather than others (for a whole host of potential reasons, including the examples cited in the earlier post that i was replying to).

Someone working behind the checkout at Tesco won't have to do a double shift the next day if they're ill on one day (it makes it more challenging for their colleagues if they need to pick up the slack that day, but that isn't something everyone thinks about when deciding whether to call in sick, let's face it!).

But in a different job the work is still waiting for them the next day, so they may decide to muddle through, especially if they can wfh. (fwiw I'm a lawyer, and sometimes the work really can't wait until Monday if there are statutory deadlines to meet. There's a whole separate thread that could be made about law firm working cultures, but that's another matter!).

I last took one sick day in March 2023, so two years ago

I have mental health illnesses, so I’ve needed time off work on a few occasions over the last few years. I’ve also was sent to hospital due to my physical disability, which I needed a day or two off work for.

In terms of typical illnesses, though. I usually have two days off work per year due to sickness bugs. I worked with small children, so it’s somewhat inevitable. There’s no leeway for me to work from home due to the nature of the job though.

These absences got sacked from my previous job, unfortunately, so I am terrified of being ill now!

Yes this is true.
My DH is NHS patient facing role with management role too.
I'm forever on at him to phone up sick when he gets ill, as he's not ill very often but then when he does get ill it hits him like a tonne of bricks.
He always tells me that only he does his job, nothing gets cancelled in his absence, it just sits and waits for him till he gets back. So he says being at home feeling like shit with the added stress of knowing how much work is building up for him to go back to, meaning returning to days on end of really working late to catch up on the work he missed by being off sick, is way worse than going in to work feeling like shit.
I've watched him push himself in to work with sky high temperatures and raging chest infections because he says he won't be able to cope with having to do all his missed work on top of all his regular work if he goes off sick. As a result, it takes him weeks and weeks to ever get better, because he keeps on working in an already highly demanding job, his body can't recover.
That's the NHS for you. Absolutely appalling, atrocious attitude towards its staff who are treated like workhorses till they drop or crack. Staff welfare doesn't exist.

In the past 20 years of employment I've had half a day off (went home at lunchtime as I felt sick) plus a planned absence for wisdom tooth extraction. When I had Covid and we were having to isolate I worked from home (felt fine).