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?

Most places run on minimal numbers of staff to save money - with no resilience in the system for absences .
However it has become part of the national psyche to feel perfectly entitled to take time off for illness in a way that people didn’t in the past . The same as more children have time off sick from school now than in the past .
People do have a weaker work ethic for many reasons , feel less inclined to worry about their team or the impact of their absence and society has become much more “me first” - whilst there are genuine people with genuine illness it has become to easy to hide behind blanket “mental health” terms that no one can question.

@Pootles34has absolutely hit the nail on the head

The car industry as well . We have been trying to get our car in for some work & mot since 6th May . The garage we use is short on getting any new and decent mechanics in . We took it in today as it goes out of mot in 2 days to be told another of his mechanics has called in sick and it can't be done until next week due to backlog .
We've had to leave it with him and hope for the best !

Plus we are an ageing population

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

And they didn't invest in young people either

Retraining? Immigration? Better pay and conditions?

Don't seem to be popular with the public unfortunately

What you are describing is backed up by the productivity stats. Public sector workforce is ballooning but each worker is doing less and less because they are off sick or working by the pool in Spain or having a mental health day.......

🙄

Definitely this. Cost cutting by employers leads to more stress on staff and then you get people leaving who don’t get replaced.

A lot of the 1,000,000 are economically inactive people in their 50s and early 60s who've decided that they can manage without a job and have enough savings to tide themselves over until a pension kicks in. (I'm not talking about those who have nice pensions and retire at 55 or whatever.)

This gets glossed over for some reason.

One thing I have noticed is that creating jobs is not seen as a good thing. At home, if you have a cleaner, a nanny and/or a gardener some people would see that as lazy, but actually, outsourcing those things is creating paid work for people. Likewise the jobs in the workplace that have gone in the name of 'efficiency' - tea lady, office junior, delivery boy, works canteen etc etc..

In 2020 the shock to the way of life meant many people seem to re-think their priorities, and this seems one outcome that resulted. Also in my workplace a number of people brought up outside the UK decided to leave and return to be near their family. Same as those who moved within the UK out of larger cities.

I am surprised no one has mentioned this yet, but how about people wearing masks if they are unwell, and have to go out in public? I am an AHP, and have had to take 6 days off in the last two months, due to unwell patients coughing all over me, and giving me their illnesses. Then, as a result, all my scheduled patients on those days, have had to have appointments cancelled and rescheduled due to my non-availability. This has pushed those people on my waiting list back even further. All for the loss of a horseshoe nail.

Most of us public sector employees are not off sick or pretending to work while holidaying in Spain. The real issue is that there isn’t enough money to hire sufficient staff. A few team members are on parental leave, some have retired, and we’re not allowed to hire replacements. So the remaining staff have to take on their workload. On top of that, more and more tasks are being assigned to us that aren't part of our core responsibilities.

Here’s a non-work example from football. Previously, we just had to inform our local FA that we were playing, book the field, and once the game ended, we were done because the referee recorded the score. This season, it's completely different: we signed up for the league, booked the pitch and referees, and now we have to complete a player sheet before each game. We also have to email the opposing team about the schedule and when we’ll hand over the locker room key. The keys, held at the council office, can’t be picked up until three hours before the game—and only during office hours. During the match, we’re required to record events live in an app. Afterwards, we have to return the keys to the council office’s drop box.

This kind of situation is happening at work too, more and more is being added to our plates. We don’t have a recruitment problem. The last time we had an open position, 300 people applied. But we’re under a hiring freeze.

Another issue is the expectation that one person should do everything. It would be far more effective to divide tasks so that people who aren’t 100% healthy could still contribute. Imagine a grocery store with only one employee working—handling everything alone is overwhelming. But instead of splitting the role between two people (for example, assigning some tasks to someone with mental health challenges), we’d rather pay benefits.

When someone can’t perform all their duties, there’s no system in place to reassign them to alternative tasks. It’s just easier to have them go off sick than to adapt their role. Also, training in every job I’ve had has been poor. It’s usually assigned to someone without removing any of their existing responsibilities, so they can’t give it proper attention.

I thought of myself as resilient too, OP, until I wasn’t.

Be thankful you’re well enough to complain about it from your end of the telescope.

Anyone can get a serious health condition any time. A civilised society looks after the less able.

Also…conversely … there are plenty of people to my knowledge who are fit and healthy and over fifty-five … who are looking for full or p/t work, who never get an interview because of the age barrier.

Everywhere is pretty much running on skeleton staff to "save costs". There has been so much cost cutting that now there is no resilience in the system for when people are ill. My old job, pre Covid had 8 full time members of staff, they now have 1 full time member of staff and 2 part time on a job share, the workload has not changed, they are now expected to do the same work 8 people did with 2 people. There is also an overtime ban and a ban on hiring temp staff (seasonal industry). Unsurprisingly there is more sickness than 5 years ago. I went to our local bakery (small local chain) and the ladies in there were saying due to increase in NI and wages their hours have now been cut and so the bakery will now open 8.30-1.30 every day instead of 8-4. It puts pressure on their set up and pack down. One of the ladies was looking for a second job to make up lost pay.

The work week is also reducing with unions pushing for 35 hours to be the new full time. I’m not opposed to this but could potentially lead to shorter business hours. Trying to get to the bank actually is quite hard for me these days, it barely seems open.

If you follow abscences for ill health in the BHS with leak of Covid etc… they match exactly.

Yes more people are ill.
Thats because there’s more illnesses around 🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️

Cleaning the air would solve a lot of that.

Bound to be worse in the Public Sector. Poor pay, crap managers, little or no incentive. All or nothing approach to sickness (if you're going to be off unwell, you might as well do it for two weeks as for two days as it will be counted as one episode). I work in the NHS. Would I work harder if I knew I'd get a bonus? Maybe not (I think I work bloody hard). But if I knew I was going to get a % or 10k bonus for going the extra mile when I feel crap, would I? Yep, you bet I would!

A lot of the problems are caused by cuts to staff/hours and not replacing them when they leave. Both in the private and public sectors. Not only does it mean that there’s no sickness/holiday cover but that the staff who are left are spread so thin they too get ill more often and have to take time off.

A few years ago my colleagues and I were all given a pay rise. Great. Except as our regional manager as they left declared that “you better all work like you deserve that pay rise”. It was about 40p above minimum wage. Not the best way to retain staff or get the most out of them: implying you think they already don’t work hard enough and expecting them to be grateful for being paid. I think attitudes like that are doing a lot of damage to the work force. I know it’s not only where I work who are getting pissed off either.

There's a recruitment freeze in my council. Where's your evidence that the public sector workforce is ballooning?

This is spot on, I think. People get ill when they’re overworked and under-supported. When you have the same workload but you’ve cut your headcount then the remaining staff are more susceptible to stress-related illness.

I disagree with the idea that not taking sick days willy nilly is ‘martyring yourself’, however. I’m in a job where taking any time off increases my workload upon my return as the work piles up (everyone else is too busy to take any of it on / they wouldn’t be able to as I have the client relationship) so there’s a huge disincentive to taking a day off for minor illness. I’m not saying that’s right, but that’s the way it is in some jobs and at certain levels of seniority.

I got antibiotics prescribed by a pharmacist last year in the UK. No appointment needed, just turned up. A few minutes in the consultation room then she wrote and processed the prescription in one. Is that service not available across the whole country?

I agree but think most of it is genuine sickness. We are an office of around ten people in our fifties and early sixties and there are only two of us who have not been off long term sick over the past year or so. One has had a stroke , then other health issues and now bedbound, two have had major spinal surgery with months off, one with cancer, another's husband was seriously ill so she was off. there have been two or three of us regularly turning up and keeping things going but it cannot be helped. The problem is no-one is really working. I see all my ex nursing collegues all retiring or severely reducing hours mid fifties when they get their big pension lump sums. I don't blame them I'll be doing the same when I can at 60 ( no longer NHS ). Out of my group of about eight friends all in our late sixties, 2 have fully retired, 2 now very part time. there are only a couple left working full time. I probably also see a skewed picture of late fifties/ early sixties as I work in benefits but there seems to be so many people with just neither of them working any more and loads claiming. I can see how the benefits bill is completely unsustainable because so fe working to pay for it all.

I think if places were staffed properly and fully, you wouldn't notice the ones off sick as much, and the services would function well. Too many jobs are down to the bare minimum staff, and lots on temporary contracts.
You can't blame people for being off when they are ill.