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.

If they insist then would wearing masks if sick be reasonable to minimise spread of germs?

I am more than happy to wear a mask when I’m sick. I’m also more than happy to stay as far away from others as is physically possible.

The 'Bradford Factor'. The WORST system ever invented as it fails to grasp WHY people are ill and removes any compassion. Why not just let people manage their own sickness? Give them a 20 days per year limit and leave it at that.

Yea
That b factor thing = not ace

I used to have to. I worked in a care home, the managers treated you like shit on their shoe anyway, but even worse if you had the audacity to call in sick (they don’t care if you are sick around vulnerable people).

No sick pay either, so you were fucked. I worked
myself until I was admitted to hospital with pneumonia. I couldn’t afford to take time off. Ended up on SSP and having to move home as I used all my savings paying the rent and couldn’t cover it with SSP.

Even when I was in hospital, the manager was harrasing me to come in.

Because they can't afford to take time off? Or because they have an unsympathetic boss who,short of them being in a coma,expects them to go in? Years ago when I worked in a shop,I had a blood clot in my leg which necessitated a 2 day stay in hospital for treatment. To say my boss was unsympathetic when I told her I would need to take 2 days off,is an understatement.

We get full pay for 6 months but you get a warning if more than 3 occasions or 6 days.

Frustrating but I don’t get paid if off sick. As it is I will be going back tomorrow not fully recovered from my virus but can’t afford to lose another day of pay.

Selfish? I have just enough money to run my house. Would you rather me not have anywhere to live?
What is a good enough excuse for you? It's a cold. Get over yourself

I don't want your cold, your sickness,sore throat ect. You get over yourself and stop being so selfish its about everyone in the workplace not just you.

Because they have work to do that means if they’re not in it’s not getting done, or someone else needs to do it and then there’s bad feelings for being off sick, you see it on threads here all the time “ my colleague is off sick again!” “My colleague is always sick near deadlines…” etc etc

Because the most recent cold drags on for about six weeks

yesterday and today it was because I’d already been off last Thursday to keep my younger 2 off sick single mum so I didn’t feel like I could be off sick myself this week 🤧 I do agree we should stay home and not spread it tho 😕

That’s awful , sorry to hear this, employees should have more rights

Bigger organisations can afford that. I went from NHS trust with 6 months paid to 1 month which will gradually Increase to max 2 months after 2 years. Not everywhere has something like this.

Ive never had a job thats given me sick pay.
I am guilty of going in to work sooner than ideal because I needed the money but also pressured to go into work when ill because of staffing levels. Even working with vulnerable people!

I can't imagine WANTING to go in when ill. Usually it's out of necessity surely

But this is nhs and we do.

Employees can't win.

There's no longer any statutory sick pay paid by the government. Years ago the employer claimed it back from HMRC when payroll was submitted. Then it stopped. It was bought back for a short time in Covid. So the cost is borne by the employer. Ironically the still very low rates of statutory suck pay are set by the Government, but not paid by them, the cost is paid by the employer.

Because not everyone has understanding employers and people already have horrendous levels of sick leave. It's a problem in our department. If we were off for every cold, it would be even worse! Nobody is expected to be off with a cold. You get spoken about like you're a weakling! Colds pass from person to person all the time, it isn't a reason to be off work. You mention Flu though, that is completely different! But I couldn't even get out of bed with Flu, it can't be compared.

You got get 6 months 'worth' of time off when you have a cold though, do you? There will be an amount of sick leave that you can take and if you go over that, you'll trigger absence procedures. If you have 6 really bad colds in a year-you can't take 6 periods of time off.

Yeah, but I’ll bet my pension that if you took a week off every couple of weeks for a cold you’d soon be out of a job.

If everyone took time off for cold and flu my work would implode

where possible people should wfh but sometimes you can’t do this.

Colds and flu aren't anywhere near the same thing. You cant work when you have flu its a very serious illness

This is one of those situations where if I had to choose lose my job/livelihood /home , to save you from getting sick then I'm afraid I'm going to choose me. It's a sad state of affairs , but I would fully expect you to do the same for you and yours.
Not trying to be goady I swear but this is the reality for many many people.

Well actually you can as flu like many other viruses can be mild or even asymptomatic. Unless you are tested no one really knows what virus they have. A “cold” covers many different viruses that present in a similar way. Flu tends to present slightly differently, often including a fever which “cold” viruses often do not.

But as we all learned with Covid, everyone can experience viruses differently. Plenty of people could work with flu if their symptoms are mild. Some people will be bed bound with a cold virus.