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?

A cold for one person can turn into respiratory problems & pneumonia for others . I hope you wore a proper mask when you were sick, going to work at nhs with poorly ppl as you say.

It's a rolling twelve month period, then it resets, in my job anyway. So you could be off for 2 months, and the following year off for five months, all fully paid. I haven't used it in my 15 years working there, only had a week here and there when needed, but it's good to know it exists.

Exactly.

I find it absolutely unfathomable that public services including the NHS have been slashed to the bone, people have been through Covid and CoL crisis, pollution of our air and water is out of control, yet people like OP are still blaming the workforce! Of course there’s a small minority of people who take the piss at work, but anyone who honestly believes that’s the root of the problem must be living under a rock.

7% of the working age population is on long-term sick. It may not be the root of the problem but it's certainly contributing.

It's hard to say... In the public sector there seems to be an expectation that workers will deliver more with less than ever. Problems with recruitment and retention (due to unattractive working conditions) mean that those remaining have to pick up the slack.
I teach in a special school. We're dangerously understaffed at times due to difficulties recruiting and, of course, staff illness. People work extremely hard, and kids are in rain or shine with all sorts of bugs and illnesses. A combination of overwork and exposure to all these germs creates a perfect storm. That's no doubt the same for a lot of workplaces - schools, nurseries, hospitals, GP surgeries, care homes, etc.
Another issue is our population aging and workforce shrinking - we definitely need immigration to fill these vital roles!

1.9 jobseekers to every vacancy.
I am not sure how people out of the workforce are the problem.There is just not the jobs there.

Yes, and what is contributing to this?

1. A dire lack of flexible working arrangements for disabled people (unless it’s mandated, employers basically have no incentive to do this);
2. A crumbling healthcare system, with many unable to work while they languish on NHS waiting lists;
3. A near-total lack of MH support which, coupled with a CoL crisis that’s pushed many to their limit, is an absolute disaster.
4. An education system which, increasingly, is failing significant numbers of children with SEND, in many cases meaning they end up leaving with no qualifications. Without sufficient apprenticeship schemes etc, what options do they have? They can’t all work in Amazon warehouses.

The vast majority of people want decent, fairly paid work that allows them to live an independent, fulfilling life. Blaming ordinary people simply distracts from the shameful systemic failures of successive governments. Makes politicians’ jobs much easier if we all blame the peasants though, doesn’t it?

I have worked in a public sector team since March 2023. I started when we had 9 FTE.

We now have 6. In the same time the demand has increased 224%.

When one of us goes off sick we have no slack. We can't shuffle among ourselves. There might be a day a meeting i have planned has to be cancelled due to sickness, but not my sickness, sickness due to me needing to cover the more urgent meeting of the person sick.

We are drowning.

I'm also owed about 8 days TOIL.

I work in mental health and have poor mental health myself.

The majority of people who are on long-term sick with mental health issues have numerous services available to them but they refuse to access them as already believe they won't work or won't be enough.

Without trying.

But if you, as a MH professional who presumably knows exactly how to access the help available, still suffer from poor MH, surely that indicates when people “believe they won’t work or won’t be enough”, they might have a point? I did all I could to access MH support when I needed it; all I got was a course of crap group CBT that gave me panic attacks when I tried to attend. When I didn’t show up for the next one because I could barely get out of bed, I simply got a terse letter saying I’d been discharged from the service. If I hadn’t had the support of family, I’d have been screwed.

And that’s only adult MH; don’t even get me started on CAMHS.

ETA: that’s not to be flippant about your (or anyone’s) MH struggles; simply to point out that often the quality of help available is poor.