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?

Makes me wonder why everyone is so unhealthy and constantly ill?

This, exactly.

Blame businesses, not people.

It should be us against them, but it’s us against each other.

Most places seem to run on skeleton staff. Where I work it is difficult to get leave so people will be off sick if they want a particular day. When someone leaves they don't think of starting the recruitment process until that person walks out the door.
There are some people who sneeze once and are off for a week yet there are others who continue working with a broken ankle or other non infectious sicknesses. Strangely enough the whole of the wider team in know exactly which individuals will be off sick (including taking time off sick for childcare and eldercare).
Also why does it take so long to recruit new staff there are people particularly younger people who are ready to work today but employers can't get their arses into gear to speed up recruitment.

You'd have to have a fair bit of service to get the six months full and six months half.

So you have someone who is forced to travel 2 hours each way 4 hours a day. Unlikely they will have the motivation to healthily cook from scratch after being at work all day and commuting for 4 hours Especially if they have been standing up all day

Agree with this… I’m so sorry you are so frustrated, and I totally get it. Your main concerns seem health related & honestly (NHS employee), we’re not ‘off sick’, we are utterly understaffed. Staffing levels are depleted year after year, and without getting too political, the previous 14 years of pay cuts are eroding recruitment & retention. I’m a midwife/health Visitor & my friend who is a nail technician earns twice what I do with 40 regular clients she see every three weeks.. no disrespect to nail techs, you deserve your money, but so do I. Re GPs… their salary is a disgrace & there’s been no investment in the service for far too long. The GP practice I’m assigned to now only sees patients 3 days a week because they don’t have the staff to cover the entire week 😞. As a health visitor we can’t get staff because we’re paid an entire grade less than we deserve… Can’t remember when I took a full lunch break (for which I’m not paid), or when I finished on time. My colleagues are exactly the same. If anything we are run ragged trying to meet the needs of people under our care and getting nowhere. I’m so tired of being hated/blamed for a cr*p service when we’re trying our best under dire conditions. I hope your situation improves soon.

Love this

The reason services are falling apart is not due to too much staff illness. And even if it that’s part of the cause, then that is likely because we have lived through a pandemic which has left a proportion of the population with chronic illness, we have a failing NHS and people are left on waiting lists getting sicker and sicker, we are living through a cost of living crisis which will obviously have an impact on people’s physical and mental health, social media has taken off in the past 10-15 years and we know that is damaging to people’s mental health. Workplaces everywhere have also cut back and cut back so that most people at all levels are doing the jobs of 4 people and are stressed and unhappy. i could go on but o don’t think the problem is the people have suddenly become really lazy in the last 10/15 years. Let’s stop blaming individuals and start looking to address the systemic issues.

It's about to get worse when they bring in pay for sickness from Day 1 for low paid.

This is a British culture now. My son works abroad and British friends just say 'just take a day off' ... which he can't as folk are relying on him.

Wow! What an aggressive post!

The Powers That Be ate trying to run public services on a shoestring. In my job they are actively looking to reduce staffing. Then when you, the consumer, needs help, you can't find anyone to do so. Teams are shrinking and this in turn causes more stress for whoever is left, which in turn invites more illness. I've seen it.

Has it occurred to you, OP, that if workers were not stretched to their limit, with gigantic workloads, and there were more people on teams, they would be able to cover the tasks of those who are absent and things would flow better?

That's how things worked 40 years ago. If you have everyone working at the limit of their capacity, every disruption causes a problem. It's just like if you leave home right on time to get somewhere. Any disruption will make you late. You know that, and if you need to get to an important appointment on time you add 15 minutes to the commute for unforeseen circumstances. Teams now are planned for perfect circumstances (no sickness, no system disruption, etc), and if any tiny thing happens the whole castle of cards tumbles down.

I think you are right. My mum died last month and I've been sorting the cremation and estate. Funeral Director off for two weeks (as it happened, didn't matter) and I was amazed there wasn't back up. Ditto solicitor, someone on holiday, no appointment for two weeks. Big company yet no spare solicitor available for the most mundane, 20 minute appointment. I was a bit boggled by it all, tbh.

I work in local government. There's one person in my team who goes off sick every year at the same time each year. Comes back when her sick pay drops. Does sweet FA when she's not off sick. Has been going on for over a decade now and yet sod all is done about it.

Another colleague has been off sick for the last six months with stress. Has come back on a phased return, and is now only doing about 10% of the job tasks.

Two people left recently and it took about six months to fill the posts.

So at one point, three of us were doing the work of 7 people. No temp staff brought in etc. Just expected to get on with it.

I've had two days off in the last year for flu, but if I was inclined, I could easily take six months off on full pay, citing stress. The public sector is a joke for this type of stuff and it's a big contributor to why services are so poor.

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.

Never been off with a cold, nor have adult DCs to my knowledge

I am on a few Universal Credit advice FB groups and every day there are about five posts where people are giving up work or have just handed their notices in due to MH, physical health or caring responsibilities.
It’s all linked. The kids who can’t attend school due to autism or ADHD, the mums who then can’t work, the aging parents, the lack of social care except in very significant cases. People can’t take it all on and work full time.
We have neglected all these systems and they’re all crumbling. The private sector cannot survive on its own. Jenny from accounts may have to quit if the NHS, social care, the education system and everything else lets her down.
I had an email about a colleague going off on long term sick yesterday and I almost cried. That’s another 30- 45 cases to be reallocated. We are already 2 and a half team members down. I’m in mental health and the workload is overwhelming. Everything has been cut and we can’t keep up. But we can’t turn away referrals.

@Toootss

ao you come into work sick, cause half a dozen others to get infected , sone of whom will be very ill and off for longer than you would have needed to clear your cold? dead clever that. So clever that our workplace encourages line managers to send staff home ( work from home or off sick ) rather than risk any bad outbreaks

you surely saw how covid - likemost viruses - killed some and left others with no symptoms at all?

There's not enough capacity within teams to allow for any absence. I completely understand companies not wanting teams 'overstaffed' and twiddling their thumbs but the reality is you just get a small dedicated team who when one leaves/is sick the others pick up as best they can when they don't really have enough capacity to even do their own job. The staff are stressed and despite their best efforts the service level drops. Stress lowers your immunity.

I've been trying to recruit two admins into my team, have been so stressed trying to cover all that work and after months of this guess what, I'm ill! I'm off sick so now my colleagues are having to cover my work. I don't get paid enough to run myself into the ground. I'm ill and I'm taking the time off.

It’s a cold - not covid with double pneumonia -and I worked in the nhs with poorly people - you don’t stay off with a cold -think how much school you’d miss if you stayed off for a cold.

You sbould stop going to work 'come rain or shine' - assuming that means you go in even when under the weather. I cannot stand people like you who do this, it just perpetuates the illnesses and for what? To rub the ego of those who think 'i never get sick' (untrue) and even worse secretly think 'i'm better than them'.

There's more important things in life than work ,capitalist robot.

My department used to have 3 ft members of staff and 2 pt. Now there's 2ft we work opposite each other and both of us are expected to cover other departments (because they're short too) as the need arises, meaning if I cover department A for an hour, I then have an hour of my own work to catch up on.
So we're doing the workload of 4 full time posts each plus extra covering other departments, with 2 of us.
Service has declined because of that, and I'm working harder and harder but I've no hope of being able to meet all the customer demands because there's just too many. Customers get frustrated and of course take it out on the person in front of them - adding to the workload and taking up more of my time. Plus customers expectations have and are increasing.

So in return for doing 2.5 people's jobs I'm paid a wage that is a challenge to survive on, and I mean the basics, I am working longer hours with more to do, so I have less down time, or time to seek medical advice etc should I become ill because you know, being a human means that happens sometimes, and am in a mostly negative atmosphere of constant fire fighting and complaints.

I don't simply exist to make other people money or to serve them, I'm not a cog in a wheel, I'm a human being and unfortunately that means I have needs of my own that I just don't have time to meet, which has a knock on effect to my physical and mental health - that even if I have time to try and seek help for, is scarce anyway.

Businesses and services are treating their staff like a necessary evil who just eat profit they want and squeeze every last drop out of them to maximise that, and humans have a limit to what they can be resilient to. Shouting at them and telling them to be more resilient whilst piling on more work isn't having the desired effect is it? The whole workforce isn't suddenly lazy, I would say the majority are at capacity and they've nothing left to give.

I think businesses and services are just cost-cutting and no longer have the staff to manage absence properly.

My team at work suffers from this. There were 5 admins on the team and we coped great. One left and hasn’t been replaced. Four of us can do the work just fine on a normal day, we can just about cope with one person being off. But any more than that and we’re stuffed. We’re not really customer facing, but it impacts on those who are.

Perhaps the NHS's generous absence policy where people are off sick for months and managers don't address it as a "not fit for work" issue is also to blame?

I think when the wider environment is as it is, any sick pay policy can contribute to further absence. Because the structural and societal factors all point us one way.

With paid leave, especially when generous, there's always going to be swinging the lead. With no paid leave, or barely any, you have people working when they're not fit to. Those working in person infect everyone else, but even when it's not, that can also be counterproductive. I work remotely and once, when soldiering on whilst not wanting to lose the day's wage, made a fuck up due to foggy headedness that caused more work for my colleagues than if I'd taken the day off.

And the other problem with no paid leave is people feeling it's fine to call in sick because they're not getting anything anyway, so there's no reason not to do it when you feel like it. Think of it as nice, flexible unpaid leave. This is less of a risk when people actually care and worry about keeping the job, but if it's something high turnover, temp or with staff who know their employer would struggle to recruit. I've never done this in my career job but I absolutely did it in part time roles around studies.

I agree with this