To wonder when productivity and health will beat presenteeism

[Nightowlatheart]

I don’t know how to enable voting on the app.

So another day when husband comes home from the office after teams meetings all day with people in other offices to log on at home with an overseas office. It’s such a pointless tick in the box.

Presenteeism craze is so weird. As a country, we have no real clue how much RSV, whooping cough, covid etc is circulating at a time. Coughing now seems to last from mid September until May for a short reprieve, until the next spring/summer wave of covid kicks off.

We would rather large swathes of staff work at a lower productivity because they’re ill due to other coming in ill. Presenteeism costs billions in lost productivity. Working when sick costs twice as much to the economy as absenteeism.

We would rather 50,000 kids per year in England got long covid and let teacher sickness (and supply cost) increase than let them stay home when contagious or put some airborne measures such as air cleaners in a classroom. We would rather lots of their families end up with both short term and life changing conditions too as a direct result of what is sent home from school.

We would even rather pressure NHS staff and carers when they’re contagious to treat/care for people with no choice.

It seems so short sighted.

Can’t afford decent sick pay? Why don’t we talk about how much the alternative costs? It is far from free.

Is your husbands office a particularly unhealthy place to work?

In terms of hours, yes, but they would also be pragmatic e.g. wouldn’t force you to work in the office if you have covid. The presenteeism is a bit daft though. Pre-covid, there would be some weeks he’d be in the office every day, some weeks in one day, based on need. There’s a guy in his team who was officially employed via another office (due to budget/headcount). This guy has to traipse two hours each way now to this other office for x number of days a week when there is no one from his team there at all, rather than go to the office he’s been going to for six years! People that need to be in every day can’t as there’s not enough hotdesks. There are weeks like recently when husband is working mainly with people overseas or in other offices, so is also expected to carry on again when he gets home (time differences etc). It’s the futility of a senseless commute to just sit at a different desk on teams on top of a very long day. He knows he’s going to lose this other team member too as he’ll go elsewhere.

The issue is, we did have a great opportunity to ditch presenteeism after Covid and loads of people took the piss, we had posters on here who were miffed that they were being asked back into the office because it meant they'd have to stop going for a run/doing all their housework/looking after their child during the day and actually do the job they were being paid to do.
So people like that wrecked it and while there are more WFH jobs now than 10 years ago, I think the progress away from presenteeism is going slower than it would have done if more people had proved they could be responsible with it.
It's rubbish.
And don't get me started on the Bradford score or the concept of "too many sick days" as if we all have the same levels of illness and should plan to be ill no more than twice a year at most. The only place I worked that had proper sick pay, people used to get signed off for months on end all the time (public sector). Maybe we were just a very unlucky workplace but it seems like a bit of a coincidence.

During lockdown, lots of people were expected to manage their jobs with no childcare and extra housework etc. Some people took the piss after lockdown, but do you really think the people that took the piss don’t take the piss in the office?

We hear about school absence - teacher absence has also increased - the main reason for both is illness. It’s beyond bonkers to scratch heads and say ‘why all this extra illness’, without ever factoring covid infections as an influence. In some countries long covid is the most common chronic illness in children and we are heading in the same direction.