UK employers' attitude to sickness is Victorian & tired of office 'martyrs'

[Startingagainandagain]

Reflecting on this as we are in the flu season.

Why do so many people will go in the office when they are so obviously unwell and risk infecting everyone else?

Why do employers seem to think that if someone is off sick they are automatically fibbing?

I have had flu symptoms all week (awful muscle pains, headaches, sore throat, constant sneezing...). I have a long term health condition and have to be careful not to mix too many pain killers with my regular meds. So I had to stay home to recover and after 3 days of rest I still feel rotten. My employer seems to be pissed off that I dared taking som time off...

I have people in my team who 'perform' martyrdom on a constant basis when it comes to illness: someone who broke several bones insisting they were working from their hospital bed (which is impossible & unsafe considering how much pain meds they give you in this situation and how drowsy they make you...), another who also assured our manager they were working while sitting in A&E with their sick partner. We also have regular instances where someone comes in with covid or similar contagious disease and then causes the rest of the team to catch it and go off sick which is totally counterproductive...

Basically I am puzzled that employers seem to think that people should never get sick and that so many employees go along with the charade.

Would it not be more sensible and healthier to have a more pragmatic view to illness at work?

And don't get me started on disability: if like me you have a long term health condition/disabilty your card is marked as soon as you declare it on end up needed time off when you have a flare up.

Why is the UK workplace like this?

Am I being unreasonable to think there is a better way to deal with illness and disability at work?

Big believe in if you are sick do not come to work. I catch bugs really easy and I hate it when someone comes in ill, obviously shouldn't be there. They pass it round to everyone else, I think I have low immune so I find it really unfair.

The thing though is you always used to be paid for sickness absence and now a lot of companies don't pay it, or only pay a few day, each is different. There is also the (for example) 3 occasion in a rolling period and disciplinary stage 1, 2 further occasions a stage 2 disciplinary etc. You are 'punished' for being ill.

I know they have to put these measures in place due to a small minority taking advantage.

Yes, it’s odd this isn’t it?

Part of the issue is the low levels of sick pay in this country but there is an issue with presenteeism too.

Was talking about this with my GP the other day. He was saying he’d hope Covid would change attitudes but sadly it didn’t and everyone has just gone back to how it was before.

I actually find my employer is reasonable about sickness absence but some of the parents at the school are totally unreasonable. Putting in complaints if a teacher is off ill, demanding to know what’s wrong with them, when they’ll be back, the credentials of who is replacing them and how long for. Demanding that other teachers leave their class and come to teach this one so that the ‘absence is shared’.

Questions and decisions that the head cannot answer/make when a member if staff is unwell with something that is undergoing investigation and the GP will only sign off for one week at a time.

There seem to be some parents who think flexible working/working from taking/being off sick is fine for them in their job, but it’s really not fine for their child’s teacher.

It starts as kids. School awards for perfect attendance. Debates when an absence is approved or if it is unauthorised. That mentality follows to work place.

I would say things are even worse than before! At least, they feel like they are.

I also think a lot of us are more susceptible to becoming sick than pre-COVID. The long-term effects still aren’t really known of course, but a lot of people seem to have weakened immune systems now.

Absolutely agree.

SSP for a week is less than a days wage for me.

Our company policy is SSP only so if I took a week off I'd get £46.70 due to the waiting days. Thankfully they're really good & at their discretion have never docked my pay for a sick day.

But I work in payroll & completely understand why people don't take sick days if all they'll get is SSP.

SMP & SPP are exactly the same - we had one client paying someone 7.5k a month but she got no enhanced SMP so she went from 7.5k gross to circa £800, pension not salary sacrifice so took a hit to pension contributions too - she came back to work after 8 weeks.

Interesting I actually think the opposite.
Excluding manual jobs, you can do most things from home. And I am surprised how tolerant the workplace is. I have people who are regularly off sick, and nobody is allowed to question anything.
The gag is the ones who are off with 'stress' when actually in my experience being off and falling even more behind on your work makes things even more stressful!

That's only the few very large businesses. The majority of businesses in the UK are small to medium, they don't have shareholders, the CEOs are usually the actual owner so bleeding it dry is totally counterproductive. When people throw sickies in these businesses it has real knock on effects. Little mister Monday morningitis, can totally fck the whole schedule for the week, so the work gets delayed so the client gets pissed off and doesn't offer more work or delays payments which stress the whole business with cash flow which often makes a business go under so no one gets paid. All because some selfish little tosser has a hangover.

I think we probably know enough to know that repeatedly catching covid even if it is mild is bad for you, especially your immune system and leaves you susceptible to other illnesses.

I'm thankful my workplace is the total opposite of this! I wonder what % of companies actually are like this?

I agree, I used to be a contractor and not get sick pay. My manager at the time would ALWAYS come in ill and infect half the office which ment I didn't get paid if I was off. It wasn't a life or death role either, she just acted like it was.

I also had a job years ago where I did shifts that ment I worked week days and weekends. My manager had a massive go at me for calling in sick on a Saturday (I rarely called in sick) I explained to him that germs don't know the days of the week and I'm no more likely to get sick on a Tuesday than a Saturday. But because it was the weekend he refused to believe i was actually ill 🙄

DH is self-employed so he'll pretty much drag himself off to a job half dead.
That being said, if he or other contractors are ill or injured while on jobs they'll often be given time off to recovery and still paid.

The "official line" for norovirus is to stay home until 48 hours after the last episode. Assuming that you are living in the loo for a day before that (and its often two) I make that 4 days for even a normal episode. I do get that some employers are arsey about sick leave. Norovirus can kill the vulnerable and is easily spread........sounds like you are an attendance martyr to me.

I never understand the type who do this martyrdom - giving so much to work - how it ends is how my godfathers career ended, he was a CEO, retired a 65, gave everything to his job - they gave him a sit gold carriage clock and off he went, the next day they forgot about him and moved on - he was depressed for several years realising he'd wasted his life.

DH's old company was like this. I had Covid twice in two years plus numerous colds because they couldn't keep their germs to themselves.

One guy even went in with shingles one day and sat next to his colleague whose wife was pregnant! In that case they did actually send him home.

DH now works from home full time and we've both never been more well. Yes, we've both had a couple of colds, but from other obvious sources (London tube, I'm looking at you!)

As a result, both of us have been a lot more productive when we are at work.

It's not rocket science is it??

I often tell people to WFH if they can if they're not 100%. I also tell them that if they're ill enough that they would be calling in sick, they shouldn't WFH either. I'd rather they spend the time sleeping it off, then staring at a computer screen unproductively for 8 hours. I'll get better work out of them when they're recovered.

IMO its selfish to go in to work sick - but I would say this lol

I am immuno suppressed and catching a bug can lead to permanantly reduced lung function

Which is a ball ache and i am still one of these random mask wearers if /when i go out the house.

I agree with you but many working environments are so "fast" and staffing so "lean" that taking time off is harder than it used to be. Not saying that's a good thing but it's the reality...

Love my mask. My lungs are so much healthier since I’ve been wearing it on public transport and I’m not catching other people’s germs.

Like everyone is saying, it's like this because that's the law.

If you take time off when you are sick you lose pay and put your job at risk. Most people work for the money because we live in capitalism. So, if you don't want people to work when they are ill, you must change the system they work within.

It's not a matter of personal preference or personality. It's not selfish, or not more selfish than the norm, because it is the norm. It's not martyrdom. It's how our economy is structured.

Many moons ago I went down with a bad cold on my birthday, but being new to the role, and the date looking a bit suspicious, I hauled arse into the office, and was promptly sent home by a very sensible manager.
The flatmate I was lumbered with at that time worked for the same company and used to pull sickies to go fishing, asking me or someone else to call in for him (I refused). Never very believable though "fine on Thursday, too sick to work Friday, and 100% recovered by Monday" Yeah. Right.
So I reckon the answer is that as long as there are people like my flatmate there will be suspicious managers, and people like me, who don't want to come under suspicion. A decent manager notices when someone is obviously unwell and sends them home though.

I am fortunate that I work for a sensible employer which treats its employees as adults and has a flexible WFH policy - we are meant to be in two days a week but as far as I know it's not strictly enforced.

They definitely don't say you can't work from home if you are mildly off colour.

I've only had two days off sick in nearly five years working there.

Whereas my DH's employer insists on, and tracks, 3 days a week in the office and says if you work from home when ill it counts as a WFH day so you have to make up the time in the office. So people go in when they'd be better off staying at home and working.

It all depends what job you do, if you work in a shop you can't very well work from home. But most office jobs CAN be done from home and if you just have a mild cold you can WFH.

If I feel really rubbish I call in sick and go to bed.

Despite what some people seem to think, there is a difference between being too ill to work at all, and being too ill to drive/faff about with a commute.

And that's all without the risk of infecting others.

A lot of employers in the UK are really quite tiresome.

Distrust happens people take the piss. And plenty of people take the piss with ‘sickness’. So it makes it worse for the genuine ones.

Well it shouldn't. That's why companies have HR teams and policies. They should deal with the ones who take the mick, and treat the rest like the adults they are.

I had a manager who suggested that the team kept back some annual leave over the winter period and use this if they became unwell.