Less likely to call in sick when WFH?

[iceybottle]

I have been working from home pretty much since Covid. We have a new system now where we can see our sickness record. I noticed my sickness days have reduced. Before I had a a couple of times off sick per year with bad colds etc.

I think that wfh, especially as I don’t really have much face to face contact, mainly emails and spreadsheets, I am less likely to call in sick and just push through. Whereas before, if I had to get up, get dressed and face a day in the office I’d just call in sick.

If you work from home what level of sickness are you before you’d consider calling in sick?

In one way it’s good as my sickness record is improved, but sometimes I almost feel too guilty even if I feel rubbish that I’m home anyway so I should just work through it.

Yep less sickness as I can go to the spare room but getting up earlier and getting ready they going for the train is a lot of effort if I’m under the weather. I also can mange my period more effectively as every so often there will be one month where the cramps and heaviness is not conducive to being in an office. I can be at home with a hot water bottle getting through work.

Yep and so much easier being able to sit at a desk at home in comfy clothes with a hot water bottle if you have period pains!

I don’t think I’ve been off sick at all since pre Covid (work from home and go to the office every few months). Before that I’d probably be off with a cold/chest infection for maybe a week a year.

What a daft rule, forcing people to come in and spread their germs to their colleagues so they all go off sick!

Where I work we are actually required to work from home if we have an infectious illness on an office day. Providing we feel well enough to be at our desk at home of course, otherwise it’s sick leave. I work at a science university with a highly regarded medical school, and the enlightened attitude to staff illness is very refreshing.

Yeah if all I have to do is get up and sit at my desk, with potentially a lie down at lunch time, I’m much less likely to call in sick than if I have to get out of the house, do the commute, and sit in the (always freezing) office all day.

When pregnant with DD1, my company didn’t allow wfh so I ended up signed off for 8 weeks due to the sickness. With DD2 I had a new job, also had bad sickness but I worked from home and wasn’t signed off at all. My company pay 100% sick pay for a few months so even if I wasn’t working at full capacity it was still to their benefit to have me doing almost all my work, than none of it but still paying me!

Sickness absence is researched by ONS

’The sickness absence rate (the percentage of working hours lost because of sickness or injury) was 2.0% in 2024, a decrease of 0.3 percentage points from 2023 (when it was 2.3%) but a 0.1 percentage points increase since the pre-coronavirus 2019 level.’

Definitely, I would generally call in sick to a physical workplace if I felt I was contagious or think I’d be unbearably uncomfortable at work. Being at home mitigates that hugely.

Ours is exactly the same now, fine to work sick on a WFH day, but must not WFH when unwell on an office day.

So now we've got a brilliant system, thanks to an absolute twat of a manager, where you've got 50% of the office coughing and spluttering all day, spreading illness like wildfire, and the other 50% calling sick for a minor illness on an office day.

It's sheer lunacy. We do Mon/Wed/Fri in the office so you have people calling sick mon, working tue, calling sick wed.

Our previous manager used a bit of brains and was fine if we WFH under the weather, but just wanted to make sure we were genuinely well enough to work rather than logging in because we felt obliged. Less sickness, less spread around, and nobody took the piss because the give and take was there.

But does that include all sickness, including longer term? Because I think the reduction would mainly be in people not having one or two days off due to a virus.

Most illnesses can be managed at home but make going to a workplace hard.

E.g. sickness and diarrhoea, you can't risk being stuck without a toilet in a car or on public transport. Viruses may mean you need to lie down at some point in the day, which you can't do at work. And you can't infect anyone else.

I very rarely take sick days now.

We work hybrid. 4 days WFH, 1 day in the office. There have been countless times people have missed their day in the office not feeling well or not wanting to spread germs, but still worked from home.

I've been in my job around 16 months now and I've had three days off sick, not working at all, all in one period where I couldn't get out of bed with the flu.

Worst part is it was in my probation period and I didn't qualify for sick pay 🤦‍♂️

We can work flexibly too so there has absolutely been times I've felt unwell and gone for a lie down during the day, then caught up with the work later in the day or the next day.

Minor illnesses were the most common reason given for sickness absence in 2024. This is the third consecutive year minor illnesses have been on top since the fall they experienced because of coronavirus (COVID-19) in 2020 and 2021.
Minor illnesses accounted for 30.0% of occurrences of sickness absence in 2024.

sometime statistics are inconvenient and don’t back up arguments based on anecdotal evidence😂

Yanbu. I have been at my current workplace for over six years and have had zero sick days. This is because the two times I would normally have needed to take time off ill (1×pleurisy and 1×tripping over and face planting the pavement whilst out for a run) were in the year post covid when we were hybrid working. I could work from my laptop but couldn't cope with the five minute walk from the car park or wear clothes on my shoulders in the case of the running injury (and I looked an absolute state).
We're onsite full time now so if either of those things were to happen today, I'd be taking sick leave.

We have hybrid working (supposed to be max 2 days WFH)
There's quite a lot of calling in to say WFH as not well, but still working.

As someone who works in a f2f role, supported by others who WFH, I've noticed that those who WFH are definitely less likely to 'phone in sick' but more likely to be completely ineffectual while they're technically at work while sick. It's pretty annoying really because they're totally incompetent while they're 'pushing through'.

I was bedbound from pain in my pregnancy and still able to work a full work day - including calls and hosting video calls etc - with WFH, despite being bedbound. I couldn't stand for more than a minute so definitely couldn't have managed a commute.

I'd have had to be completely signed off sick if my role didn't allow me to WFH.

So yes, it makes a massive difference to sickness rates. It also allows people with disabilities who couldn't make it into an office to work too

Where I work, the pre-Covid absence rate for illness was around 8% of the workforce on average. It's now just over 3%.
So it's a massive improvement