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?

@PerditaLaChien 'Its not usual for healthy adults to get so ill that they need 3 days off work.'

This is not accurate.

People who have the flu will usually be ill between 3 to 7 days and it can take up to 2 weeks for your body to completely recover. You are also likely to be contagious for the first 5 days.

Covid can also last longer than 3 days for many people, including those with no underlying condition.

This type of misinformation is one of the reasons why so many workplaces are completely unrealistic when it comes to sickness.

Anyone can improve their immune system through adopting a healthier lifestyle incorporating sleep, diet and exercise.

@HelmholtzWatson I'm immunocompromised
It's never going to improve

You seem to have forgotten that some people may be taking immunosuppressive medication?

I've just spent 2 years on immune suppressants. Every cold left me hideously unwell.

Since coming off them I can work through colds again. "Just a cold" to one person may render another very ill, through no fault of their own

"single bouts of moderate intensity exercise are “immuno-enhancing” and have been used to effectively increase vaccine responses in “at-risk” patients. Improvements in immunity due to regular exercise of moderate intensity may be due to reductions in inflammation, maintenance of thymic mass, alterations in the composition of “older” and “younger” immune cells, enhanced immunosurveillance, and/or the amelioration of psychological stress. Indeed, exercise is a powerful behavioral intervention that has the potential to improve immune and health outcomes in the elderly, the obese, and patients living with cancer and chronic viral infections such as HIV."

Oh goody, all that sick people need to do is go for a jog.
simples

I hadn't "forgotten" anything, I was making a completely different point that regardless of why your immune system is compromised, it can be improved by healthy behaviour.

or maybe eat better, work harder on improving their sleep, or going for a walk.

It's a fucking stupid point because it makes it sound like people struggling with immune suppression are just unhealthy. It's horribly minimising

The only difference between me fighting off and cold and not was stopping taking the tablets. My diet was healthy during treatment and didn't change after. I exercised as much as I was able (because it love exercise) but the whole reason I was on the sodding treatment was to treat a condition that had made me too unwell to exercise most of the time. So it's monstrously insulting and tone deaf and ableist "advice"

Maybe they are doing all those things already. Maybe you should go and read up on some of the multiplicity of conditions that are treated with immune suppression before tossing out such trite "advice"

It's not "advice", it's evidence.

I don't have cancer or a chronic viral infection and I'm not elderly

My body kills my white blood cells. The only way to improve that is by injecting bone marrow stimulant which I do
Exercise is not going to make any difference at all to my actual condition (obviously it is good for your mental health and body and strength)

You are conveniently ignoring the overwhelming impact the medication has.

I have a very healthy lifestyle. Boringly healthy. But the immune suppression was to treat a condition that was preventing me exercising. And the only change in lifestyle I have made in the last few months is stopping taking the tablets. And that has been the difference between being desperately ill with a cold and needing antibiotics, and being fine to carry on normal life and work with a cold.

I don't know why you are so keen to deny that reality?

Well no, because many of us are on strong medication that is expressly designed to suppress the immune system. These drugs are not negated by a healthy diet and exercise.

For those suggesting that people are only sick because they have unhealthy lifestyles:

• I don't smoke or drink alcohol
• I am vegetarian and never touch junk food
• I exercise as much as I can, including weekly pilates classes to help with my muscles and balance
• I am not overweight
• Since my life threatening episode last year I also do 10 minute guided meditation every morning
• I make sure I go to sleep early enough to get enough rest. I still struggle daily with tiredness and brain fog though
• I take all the medications I need to help manage my condition every day without fail.

So frankly I do everything I can to help me manage my long term health issue.

Unfortunately that does not equal to zero time off sick...

Some of the comments really show how much ignorance there is around disability and long term health issues.

Agree it's a short sighted approach.

Also desk hopping is a great way to spread germs 🦠

My workplace are quite good at telling us if we are sick we should rest at home. We are well looked after. That said if I have something mild (eg slight cold) I'd work- in the office. I'd mask up though these days. The only thing for me is that I do struggle in with bad periods as they do keep an eye on how much sick leave we've taken. I don't want to burn through my days with that but at the worst of it I just want my bed and bathroom- sleep is the best thing.

I used to work with someone who took ages off at the very slightest sniffle (so she claimed). She did it a fair bit and our general feeling was that she did piss take - it was retail so feet on the floor counted. Especially as she was also a shift manager and could be extremely unpleasant to people who rang in sick when she was in charge- she'd always imply they were faking it and wouldn't bother to hide her annoyance. Yet she expected cosseting for evwy ickle boo boo.

Ironically she once came in miles too early after norovirus - she hadn't told us she had suspected noro at this point on a Saturday, just a "winter bug" and then wouldn't communicate further (fair enough but it would've helped if she'd been honest initially) apart from saying she'd be back on Monday. We were so used to her avoiding weekend working we just chalked it up to another bout of "Katie-itis". She then proceeded to be spectacularly ill at work on Monday and demanded the manager or I (I was the other duty manager) came to relieve her. Neither of us were "free" (more like neither of us were going to help HER; I purposely ignored my phone because the little bitch deserved it after how she treated everyone else) and she had to stay there and shit herself til another branch sent someone.

We then had to scrub the place to be safe - this was the bit we resented. She'd contaminated the store by coming in in the first place. She'd had to wait for the relief manager about as long as she'd have had to wait for me anyway (I didn't live near work and I wasn't at home) and she'd removed herself from the shopfloor by then anyway.

Or maybe you could try getting a clue about the nature of chronic illness. (And have a read up on sleep disorders, come to that. 'Working harder' to improve sleep doesn't make a blind bit of difference for some of us.)

It's beyond insulting to suggest those of us with chronic health problems aren't doing their best to improve our lot. If anything, I think many of us work harder at it than most people, simply to feel marginally less shit. But none of the measures you suggested are magic wands, and they're not even possible for everybody. There's no one-size-fits-all solution.

I think HW was probably just on the wind up tbh

I haven't denied any reality. I'm sure there are lots of immunocompromised people living healthy lifestyles. However, at the population level, obesity, lack of exercise and poor sleeping habits are major causes of compromised immunity. Improving these behaviours will, for the vast majority of people, lead to a more robust immune system.

There are huge sectors were you can’t work from home or there is little scope to retail, hospitality, eductation and healthcare. I think the % of people who can work from home is small.

I live in Germany and it's a whole different world - when someone's off sick there's a good chance they'll be signed off by their doctor for the whole week. Couldn't believe it when I first came here. If you are in the office ill, it is seen negatively like 'why are you here if you're sick'? they just don't get it and feel cross with you. It feels like people are going to the doctor a lot for various things, and feels like there is more preventative health care because you will just blithely go for check up XYZ during working hours and not really worrying. I don't think it leads to a lot of skiving, maybe a bit from people who would skive anyway, but the hardworking ones do their best to catch up when they're back. I've got used to it now but still can't bring myself to take sick days, (except when I had Covid), when that happens I work from home and just do as much as I can. The mentality we grow up with is so ingrained and I believe can change over time in each country but it takes ages.

For all the moaning on here about how we should have followed Sweden during Covid the fact that the British see it as a bigger faux pas to take time off work ‘with a bit of a cold’ than to go into your workplace and infect people even if your symptoms are minor is a good reason why it wouldn’t work here.

Was talking to my GP recently and he said he’d hoped the attitude in the UK would change after the pandemic but thinks it may have got worse.

But do you agree that it really isn’t feasible for every single profession to take time off at the slightest hint of a cold?
So every office worker, gas engineer, teacher, doctor, dentist, lorry driver, check out staff, plumber, surgeon, receptionist, childminder, nurse, retail worker, delivery driver, supermarket delivery driver, etc etc? Those who don’t get sick pay?
My work consists of 8 people. 5 whom had slight colds a few weeks ago. If all of those 5 were off the entire company would have needed to have shut down. Do all those people get paid? Even the ones who aren’t sick but now can’t work as the place is shut?

I have a few health issues so would get sick more than most. I also had high blood pressure and got a lot of migraines but was always made to feel guilty when I took time off. The job I was doing was very stressful and I was in a senior position at a big international company but not quite at the top so not in a position to change things. I finally resigned and changed career completely when the second of my colleagues died, both of them from heart related problems. The money was good, but there was no way I wanted to put my life at risk for something that didn't seem that important (At the end of the day it was just an office job and nobody cared about anyone else).