What is health like in your industry compared to before the pandemic

[Absence]

Are there any industries where illness absence hasn’t increased since before the pandemic?

Teaching is an area where sickness absence has increased. Obviously the pandemic pays a part in this - both the handling of the pandemic and disproportionate amount of long covid in teachers due to ease of spread in schools. Burnout plays a role. Greater pressures on NHS due to covid (and long covid) and knock on effects of reduced access and waiting lists. I know some industries will be able to hide this information better (e.g. do some work from home in bed if ill, combined with encouraging wfh when ill to reduce onward spread of viruses). NHS staff have higher illness rates now too. Students do. Is it naive to think any industry doesn’t or are there some winners here?

I’m self employed and a maths tutor and I’ve got a few kids who have long covid and can no longer attend mainstream schools. The pandemic was pretty good for business for me. Double edged sword though, lots of parents still send their kids to me when the poor things are unwell - I recently got scarlet fever from one of them and I was fucking raging.

I don’t think it was an inevitable that Covid would wreck the health service, it was just the straw that broke the camel’s back for the NHS. I teach abroad and access to medical care is good (not perfect but acceptable), work stressors are medium, not off the scale, and staff absence is extremely low. So is school refusal - we have only had 1 in the whole school in the past year.

Massively lower sickness absence rates in my sector (legal) as we mostly wfh.

Obviously that’s cutting back on all the sick days where you might feel too ill to haul yourself into a commute, but can manage a few emails from your sickbed.

I think time off sick is less with the increase in flexible working. As PP said, in the days where we would have to work face to face with people, or commute to the office/hospital, we would be more likely to call in sick as that's much harder to do when ill.

But if you can change your diary and do things on Teams, or work on admin tasks instead of attend appointments, you might feel able to work.

The culture of working from home anyway or when sick is also better in that it means we are exposed to far less germs and therefore less likely to get sick in the first place. I do think people should avoid mixing where there are people when sick (with something contagious). I wish people still did that, like we did during the COVID years. Or at least wear a mask if you have something infectious. I don't want someone coughing germs all over me. They are much better at this just basic consideration and human decency in Asia. People will wear masks if they are ill and out in public.

Most of our team meetings are hybrid, so it's considerate to not come in and sit with others if you are infectious.

From memory, I haven't had any time off sick for several years.

It makes sense for those that can to wfh or rearrange diaries. There is a knock on effect of not spreading it to colleagues / taking in more infections to colleagues from places like schools and hospitals where infection spread is taken less seriously.

A neighbour does tutoring and has a lung condition from a covid infection. She asks parents not to send children to her when unwell and offers a rebate or online alternative for that session. Some parents would still send children to her when unwell, which has had a high personal health and financial cost, so she’s had to rethink her business model. She still does some inperson tutoring, but limits it to those she can trust and does the rest online. Obviously pressures on the NHS due to covid continue - both with legacy impacts of covid in the first year or two and with immediate/long term impacts of ongoing regular waves following that (notwithstanding all the other pressures on NHS and PP point about straw breaking camel’s back). Long covid is obviously awful to deal with at any age, but I do feel exceptionally sorry for all the children with it.

Finance with hyprid working. I would say sickness levels are down as we don't commute as much (all but some take packed commuter trains) and if we feel a bit under the weather we stay at home and can rest easier, I had days I just slept in until 8am instead of getting up at 6am and could rest properly in my lunch break and after 5pm instead of dragging myself home with another packed train.

That also means any cold is often over quicker as well.

Resting and recovering quicker makes sense too, using energy for actual work rather than the commute, plus additional benefit of not picking up another virus to deal with at the same time on the train.

I’ve changed job since the pandemic but I don’t think sickness rates are particularly high where I work (financial services). I am strict about making my team take time off/not come into the offfice if they’re sick so they can properly recover. We don’t really have anyone off on long term sick leave either and we try to keep stress to a minimum (although I appreciate there are other reasons to be off sick). I’ve had bad experiences in previous workplaces so I’m somewhat overprotective of my team and the demands on them.

You sound like a great manager