AIBU to think too many people being off work is causing the country to fall apart?

[Tanyasfootspa]

Posting here out of sheer frustration really. Is it just me or does it feel like everything is grinding to a halt because half the workforce is off sick.

I’ve had three appointments cancelled this week alone — GP, dentist, and my son’s speech therapy. All due to staff absences. Tried to phone the council about a bins issue (don’t even get me started) and was on hold for 47 minutes before being cut off.

Meanwhile, I go to work, rain or shine. Loads of my colleagues are off with colds, stress, or just “taking a mental health day.” I’m not doubting genuine illness, but surely there’s a tipping point where too many people being off means things just don’t function?

Schools are short-staffed, NHS is beyond crisis, trains are delayed, post is late. It’s not just inconvenience — this feels like serious breakdown of basic services.

AIBU to think the UK is being held together by a rapidly shrinking group of people who are actually showing up?

Something’s clearly not working. It feels like there’s no backup anymore. No resilience. Just everything falling to pieces when someone sneezes or feels stressed.

Anyone else noticing this or am I being unfair?

You are not wrong but a lot of this really is illness.

there’s a lot more about since Covid. My DD’s girlfriend has a brain tumor, so many of my friends have had heart attacks or strokes.

and straight up tummy bugs with d and v and covid are everywhere.

I think people work too much actually

I think there's been a lot of cost cutting, trying to 'do more with less', so when someone is off there's less wiggle room. Also added stress to remaining workforce, meaning they are more likely to go off sick, and then it becomes a bit of a vicious circle really.

I’ve been sick twice in the past two months with awful colds. What do you want me to do? Drag myself into work because you’ve decided I’m not sick enough? Fuck that. Just because you’re happy to martyr yourself going in when you’re poorly and spreading it about doesn’t mean we all have to do the same!

Perhaps years of under investment in the NHS are to blame?

I think it's more likely that businesses and public services used to be able to have staffing at a higher contingency level so that services could still go ahead with one less member of staff. However, continuous cost cutting has led to many services being staffed by one person at a time and of course will fall down if that person is off.

I think there is no resilience in the system (rather than lack of resilience in individusls)

I work in schools and in all of them the budget is so tight that staffing is cut to the absolute minimum to function on an ordinary day. Which means no flexibility if someone is ill or something unusual happens.

I imagine all public services are the same or worse and a lot of private companies are similarm

It's like we worked out what was needed on an easy day, staffed the country to just almost manage that, then act surprised that a pandemic with known long term health issues had an impact

Op, when you say "rain or shine" do you mean you attend the office when ill? I'm not sure I would want you in my office while ill. I have a colleague who is under a lot of stress and will try to come in when ill but we have gently encouraged her to stay home as we really don't want the germs ourselves!

But consider why it’s the case.

Employers have taken a position of cutting costs to the bare minimum, so there’s no redundancy in the system and if one person doesn’t turn up then services fail. A sensible company should plan for this, but it’s likely to get worse as national insurance and minimum wages increases.

And it’s pretty much impossible to get primary healthcare at the moment, and so getting something like antibiotics for a chest infection is practically a miracle - and so people are getting more ill with less serious illnesses, and therefore having to take the time off work.

And people generally aren’t paid enough to care - they may as well take the day off as their employer isn’t paying enough to buy their loyalty.

I say this having had two sick days in 13 years - so I’m not workshy, but I understand why this would be happening.

Agree - there should be systems to cover short term illness.

I think sickness absence is a problem in lots of places, but I don't think it stems from laziness on the whole. As a nation too many people are knackered, with poor mental health, a poor quality of life and no end in sight from the relentless drudge of working to just about keep afloat. Everywhere I go people seem run down and fed up, I think our lifestyles are having an impact.

We're always told that the UK has low productivity and I can believe it, but the answer isn't people working more - the answer must be getting us healthy, motivated and feeling rewarded for our efforts. Long hours, little sleep, minimal social interaction and poor diets are the issue.

I didn't realise the NHS ran the train service 😆

No, seriously though, underfunding is really the problem.
Staff cuts mean no one is there to cover in an absence. In all the national services.

This. I once had a boss who was an “I never take a day off me” person. He came to the office for three days with a really heavy cold. Spent the whole time moaning about how ill he was, never did any work, coughed and sneezed all over the place.

Over the next week the two people who sat opposite him and the two who sat next to him came down with what he had. They took time off and he berated them for being weak and not being resilient, moaned about being short staffed.

I agree. Our local council has one social worker working in the Children with Disabilities team. She works 3 days a week. There used to be 4 of them working full time.

Everyone seems to be ill all the time. I’ve been ill since Easter and on antibiotics now. Luckily I work from home as would have definitely been too poorly to go in to the office some days. But I haven’t actually taken any time off, although my productivity probably hasn’t been great.

But I will probably have to take some time off sick in the future and my employer has made so many people redundant that if I do, there is no one at all the step in and take on my work. I don’t think they have even thought of this as I am very reliable.

The UK workforce has shrunk. By over a million since 2020, according to the IES. This has had an impact on all kinds of services and sectors, meanwhile our demand for them hasn't correspondingly decreased. So you're right OP, in many cases the backup quite literally isn't there.

Gee, it's almost as if a country with an ageing population and a shrinking workforce shouldn't have spent the past decade and a half voting for governments that refused to invest in the infrastructure needed to tackle, or at least mitigate, those problems, while also allowing wealth inequality to run rampant 🤷‍♀️

This is not news. Both the current and previous government have clearly stated that the number of people of working age that are not working due to ill health is not sustainable. The problem is, how do you distinguish between the genuinely ill and those that are taking the piss. And then how do we stop the spongers so that we can properly support those in genuine need? Nobody has come up with a solution yet!

A lot of people are genuinely ill. I know people who have been horrendously affected by Covid, a couple of whom will probably never work again. Maybe try & show some empathy.

Well, I’ve been off for nearly a year with cancer, so I guess I’m part of the problem.

However, my guess is that a lot of this is trying to improve margins within organisations in tough economic times. Our local pharmacy (both of them actually) are always struggling due to “staff shortage”. Queues like 30 people long out the door into the street. It’s always “so sorry for the delay, we’re short on staff today!”

Except that I’ve been there a few days a month for probably 6 months now (the cancer thing). It’s always the same staff working and there is always a “staff shortage”. I think they just won’t hire enough people to get the jobs done.

Similarly, in my industry, yes, I’ve been off sick for a year (actually no longer ‘off sick’ as my job disappeared since I got cancer and now I’m just unemployed). But I regularly search for jobs thinking about when I no longer am too ill to work. Where previous 10-20 jobs might have come up in 50 mile radius, there are now 0. Wherever vacancies might be occurring, no one is looking to fill them anymore.

Honestly I think it's cost cutting by businesses and services. I'm a teacher and when anyone is off sick, school won't get supply in. You just have to make do. They get the TAs to cover classes and teachers just go without their TAs. It's really rubbish.

There just isn't staff to cover absences. GP absence may not be about resisilience, but patient safety.
I work in a hospital. When I started we used to hire summer employees to cover absences. This is how most of us got our firat jobs. Now we just manage with skeleton crew or close the ward for a few weeks. There are few functions where there is nobody to cover and there is no money to bring someone in for the day/week.

Businesses used to build in sickness when hiring and deciding on necessary staff numbers. Now, they don’t. There are also fewer staff overall, nevermind the sickness absences. Maybe 15 years ago, you’d have 3 people on one workload but now you’ve only got one person on it. That’s how it is, spread across every level of business. So when that one person is off sick, the other staff simply cannot absorb the work as they’re already doing the job of 3 people.

It’s cost cutting. That also leads to higher sickness levels as people are exhausted and can’t push through as the day is too demanding.

Except that I’ve been there a few days a month for probably 6 months now (the cancer thing). It’s always the same staff working and there is always a “staff shortage”. I think they just won’t hire enough people to get the jobs done.

Retail pharmacy is also really struggling to fill posts at the moment too.

cpe.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Pharmacy-Pressures-Survey-2024-Staffing-and-Morale-Report-Final-Oct-2024.pdf

That’s a really interesting point about the workforce shrinking — I had no idea it was by over a million! No wonder things feel like they’re falling apart. If demand hasn’t gone down but the number of people to meet it has, then of course we’re going to feel the strain.

What I’m really wondering is: what can we actually do about this? It feels like there’s a huge gap opening up and no real plan to fix it. Where are the workers going to come from? Retraining? Immigration? Better pay and conditions?

Also, has anyone else noticed this seems worse in the public sector than private? In my husband’s job (private company) there seems very little sickness and time off despite working very long hours and some nights. But in mine (public sector) hours are shorter but people are off all the time, many multiple times per month.