Why do people come to work when they are ill??!

[Confused228]

In work yesterday, about 3 or 4 people are harbouring horrible cold/flu type things. Surprise surprise tonight I am starting to feel ill. I honestly think it's so selfish, stay home if you're ill and don't come to work spreading your germs about!! We work in an industry with really good sick leave policies.

An employer can have a very good sick leave policy when it comes to long term illness, but frequent odd days or a couple of days tend to trigger warning, especially if the employer uses the Bradford Index to calculate this.

This is a calculation bases on the number of times sick leave is taken, with a multiplier according to the typical number of days - more complex than that, but along those lines. It means if someone has say, 2 days off more than 5 times in a year, or a week 3 times in a year, they could be considered for disciplinary. This is in a rolling year rather than a fixed start or end point.

So if someone takes a day or 2 each time they have a cold, and they have a few as they are prone to them or have kits who catch everything going at school & pass it on, then they are flagged on the Bradford index.

You can’t win. If you go in poorly everyone complains you’re spreading germs. If you call in sick, sickness management policies mean you feel guilty and possibly get a reputation for being unreliable. The NHS is awful for this!

My sister goes in to be a martyr- she waits to see if the manager sends her home . I have told her she is ridiculous she is a grown adult who knows if she is fit for work .

i don’t have a great sickness policy - so go in if I can .So many have a cough and cold at the moment I am in the minority of those who don’t . But get why people are there.

That said in my job I get very close to patients . I was about 30 cm away from someone who continued to tell me he had whooping cough 🤷‍♂️

Absolutely sure, I've worked at this company for 10 years.

Thanks for your sarcastic comment, if you'd read then I have said we get paid in full for up to 6 months of sickness.

I suspect that if your colleagues started to take time off when they were well enough to work then your employer's sickness policy might become less generous. Huge numbers of work hours would be missed if people took time off with a cold.

Unfortunately contact with people with coughs and colds is inevitable- work, transport, shopping, exercise, school etc etc.. It's not practical to expect people to stay away unless there are people with severely compromised immune systems to consider.

Bradford factor and on retail it's usually a 4 strikes and then they try to get rid of you.

I have deadlines...my work has to be filed at certain times. No one else picks the work up, unless I have a sick note (you don't get a sick note for a cold) If filings are late, I get the blame... no option than to sit there coughing and spluttering. I refuse to work from home because I should be allowed to recuperate, so don't feel like I need to do anyone else any favours

Well at least one of them was not well enough to be at work and was sent home at lunch.

The sickness policy is for sick note absence in my workplace. And to be sent home by your manager is more preferable than phoning in sick. As you tried and someone senior sent you home, so they then can't really shout at you

I had it the once when I took a day off after a weekend to ensure it was 48 hours after D&V. It was my first day off sick in three years. I was never late or disappearing during the working day in any of those years and often put in hours outside of contractual. However it was a hot weekend and several managers commented that I had been skiving to make the most of the hot weather. It's things like this that make people reluctant to take time off when ill. When you've got bills to pay or chasing promotions/pay rises for some taking the risk of being off isn't appropriate.

We now do “hybrid working” so we only have to go into the office 50% of the time. (Although many people - me included - go in a lot more than that as they like to.)

But the expectation is that if you have so much as a sniffle then you work from home until completely better.

It is brilliant! I haven’t had a single cold this year so far. (Touch wood! Watch as I now come down with horrific flu tomorrow.)

Of course it does mean that the person who hates working in the office has been suffering from “think I am coming down with something” every other week since mid September so I am starting to worry about his immune system. 😂

You don’t just get 6 months worth of everything though, do you? It’s not like you can have a week of colds, some stomach upsets, a few headaches etc up to the value of 6months?

A few things here

If they were in work, they didn't have flu. People die with flu it makes you feel utterly horrendous. You wouldn't be going into work with it

If you came into contact with them yesterday they can't possibly have given you anything. In fact you were probably incubating and likely were already contagious so could have made others ill without knowing it

And as others have said, if you get 3-4 colds a year and take sick leave each time you will likely get flagged and end up on attendance management

The Bradford Factor formula itself is: S² x D = B.

This means that the number of spells of absence (S) is multiplied by itself, with that number then multiplied by the total number of days a person was absent (D) during a 52-week period.

For example:
If Jeff calls in sick six times (S = 6), taking two days off on one occasion and one day on each of the other five (therefore D = 7), then his Bradford Factor score would be 252 (because 6 x 6 x 7 = 252).

Meanwhile, if Amelia has only two spells of absence in the same year, but takes more days off (three days on one occasion and six days on the second), then her Bradford Factor score would be 36 (2 x 2 x 9 = 36).

If people took time off every time they have a cold their score would be terrible and they would face disciplinary action.

I work in a school and it is explicitly stated that we are expected to come in if we are able to work irrespective of if we have covid etc. Of course the expectations are the same for students so it is an absolute germ fest hence I have had 3 separate cold/flu/rsv/covid infections (no test so I don't know which) since September.

I did hope we would learn from covid and start to be more infection aware and stop behaving in ways that spread things so much. Alas it appears not to be so.

I work in the public sector and colleagues do this all the time. I have no idea why. Our jobs might be fairly important (healthcare) but not worth spreading germs to colleagues (and patients!)

My employer only gives sick leave to long standing employees. The rest get nothing when ill. Everyone's absence is monitored with the Bradford factor which is some sort of mathematical equation which gets you closer to your P45 with each day off.

That's pretty unusual I'd say and maybe explains why you don't understand why other people who don't work in such generous places might take a different view

You need to ask your questions of your workmates

OP I hear you about good sick leave in your industry but I'm curious about how colleagues might be thought of or treated in reality if they are off ill frequently. Maybe your managers are all really relaxed and understanding about this but I'd be surprised if this were the case, and even if they seem that way, they might well end up harbouring prejudices when it comes to weighing candidates up for internal promotions or other opportunities. I think being off ill a lot, even with really good reason, leads others to see you as less reliable / dependable / resilient. Do you think there's any possibility that this is at play here or are you sure it won't be relevant in your workplace?

Other factors that might perhaps explain it include:

• internalised attitudes (people end up feeling guilty for being off / worrying about being seen as lazy by themselves as well as by others. Some people place value on being 'stoical' and see it as sort of heroic to turn up to work ill. This might be down to how they were raised and / or to the culture of workplaces they've known in the past. For example I once worked with a manager who boasted that he hadn't had a day off sick in 30 years and he was celebrated for this by the higher-ups; it left me feeling ashamed for taking a day off myself);
• hedging of future bets (people might feel bad now but wonder if they'll get a more serious illness later so would rather make themselves go in when they can. I'm in this position myself with a young DC in nursery who keeps getting illnesses and passing them on to me - I'm so worried that I'll be off with something bigger down the line that it has to be pretty bad for me to stay off);
• worry about looking bad to colleagues (even if managers and policies are supportive, I've known colleagues moan and make insinuations about people being off sick. Depending on the job role, colleagues might have extra work dumped on them that they end up resenting);
• worry about letting others down (I suppose a more alteristic version of the previous point);
• worry about losing out on work / projects / opportunities to colleagues (again depending on the nature of the role);
• stress and strain at home (a lot of people have partners who work from home or who look after kids at home, or have other caring responsibilities or stresses going on at home. In some cases being home ill rather than in work might be more stressful / disruptive for them than turning up to work in these cases, especially if the partner is also unwell and needs looking after);
• the fact that not working for a few days might end up creating so much work stress that it just doesn't seem worth it (I've been there on this one too - the thought of dealing with the consequences of my absence when better was grim enough to make me drag myself in).

I'm not saying any of this makes it good for people to come to work ill and I wish that no one had to. Hopefully though you can empathise a bit with people who choose to do this though - there are so many possible reasons that labelling people as selfish really doesn't seem fair to me, especially when you don't know the detail of what is going on in their lives and of how their existing experiences are influencing the way they see their situation.

That’s how my company works, a heavily unionised company with a generous sick pay policy. Starts at 2 weeks full/2 weeks half pay up to 26 weeks full/26 weeks half pay with service, each rolling year and is used for any illness.

Good for you. A lot of people including me don’t.

I get good sick pay but on the 3rd occasion of sickness you get a warning, 4th occasion possible dismissal. If you were off every time you had a cold/ were ill it could easily add up to 4 times in a year. It’s not worth the risk unless you literally can’t do your job.

So if you had large numbers of periods of different illnesses, as long as it was under 6m, no sort of absence disciplinary process would be triggered?

I think it's good manners to wear a mask if one has a respiratory virus, just to protect everyone else.

@NunyaBeeswax

The Bradford Factor

My company uses it and then perform
disciplinaries on people who have overstepped the boundaries.

It's so not fair