Will sickness absence policies change?

[BirdieFriendReturns]

Before CV, I read a lot of posts about people going to work with various ailments, influenza, limbs hanging off etc. I wonder how that will change now?

I know of some employers who currently aren’t putting anybody with Coronavirus symptoms onto formal sickness absence policies. So you could have a cold but you stay home and get your absence discounted.

Once we start going back to work, I imagine anybody with symptoms will be told to stay at home for 7 days. Will employers support that, pay staff sick pay and discount absences? For how long? 6 months? 1 year? 2 years?

Interested to read what you think will happen!

I honestly don’t see how sickness policies can’t change in the medium term. I think the 14 day household isolation may need to stay in place for a long while yet to keep on top of the spread. Ideally it should be isolation or a negative test if the government can get their act together.

It’s going to be a tough one to implement though. There’s a divided culture of ‘everyone’s a skiver’ vs ‘I go to work with my eyeball hanging out’ that just being sensible is going to be really hard to implement and enforce.

My workplace recently did a staff survey and 70% of staff said they had gone into work despite not really feeling well enough to be there. That’s not great in normal times but in the context of covid it’s quite frightening to realise exactly how quickly we could be in the midst of a massive outbreak.

It’s going to take a fair bit of carrot and stick to get everyone on board if they take that route.