Sickness from work

[Minstrel SE]

A good thread Gary because the reality is that nobody with a contagious illness like flu should be coming to work.

I feel the main reasons are nobody wants to live on statutory sick pay, wages might be low, meaning every week is essential and bosses dont give a damn about their staff anyway. There was no sickness cover really so it was not an option to send someone home.

I lost count of the number of people with flu and whooping coughs in close proximity to me. We tend to make jokes about keeping away and getting it free of charge. However its not lighthearted at all when I feel like grim death in a few days time

I have been guilty of going in and part of the thought process is that Ive caught a bad cold twice from the work environment anyway so stuff them and Im going in to slog through it.

You are right though and it should be questioned without fear of feeling awkward. There seems to be a culture here of nobody really giving a toss about how viruses affects others.

Ive seen videos where they wear masks like Japan. There seems to be more of a respect for fellow man or some sort of shame of knowingly spreading illness

[mad-moon]

Most employers couldn't give a shit about their employees physical or mental health. They would rather have you infect the whole workforce than say you are ill, which would be treated with suspicion and derision, which you could sense in the tone of voice during the telephone call and so everybody loses. Did the firm learn a lesson? Unlikely, but they made it clear where you stand as a valued employee

do we ever learn a lesson...I'm tired of hearing when something goes drastically wrong ''lessons have been learned'' history tells us, we never bloody learn, as that phrase would not be used...

[Len Co]

I certainly don't condone people being pressured to work when sick but just to present another picture...I worked mainly for large companies in offices among salaried employees where you got paid if you were off sick (within reason of course). It was a job to get some people to come in 5 times a week - Fortunately not my job! People get very good at playing the system.

[struth]

if your off with supermarkets you get a warning. 3 and your sacked. you get a warning even if your in hospital with something serious.

[Macca]

Where I work if you are off 3 times in a 12 month period you get a 'letter of concern.' Although this is at the individual manager's discretion.

A friend of mine had a policy where he always went into work when sick on the grounds that he did not want to waste his sick days. He'd take his sick days when he was feeling fine so that he could enjoy the day off.

[Pigmy Pony]

Where I work if you are off 3 times in a 12 month period you get a 'letter of concern.' Although this is at the individual manager's discretion.

A friend of mine had a policy where he always went into work when sick on the grounds that he did not want to waste his sick days. He'd take his sick days when he was feeling fine so that he could enjoy the day off.

And no doubt his employers think he's a real trooper - "He comes in even when he's sick, so it must be really bad to keep him away".

[Macca]

Yep, he'd thought it through pretty well.

[dave2010]

Where I worked most recently it was written into HR policy that employees who had, or suspected having a contagious or infectious disease (other than a common cold) had to seek permission before coming to work. There were one or two occasions when I told a member of the team to go home. But we had fairly generous sick pay terms so people did not have an incentive to come to work unnecessarily.

Even a so called common cold can be a pain, though many people (including me) would call it flu just to make it sound more serious, otherwise people think you're skiving. Real flu is horrible - I think I only had it once. The difference between flu and a cold is immense, even though some colds can be really bad. One of the worse things I had was labyrinthitis - and doing anything is almost impossible. The whole world spins round, and standing up is very difficult.

I guess it's really difficult where people work in closely connected teams, and each has a significant role to play. Then loss of one member even for a few days can disrupt the team, and the alternative of one person coming in and infecting the others is not good either. Not all work is like that though, and even though in some work places there may be a "team", the work is more collective, but done by individuals, so one or two people not turning up does not have a big knock on effect. Some people can be off sick, yet still effectively work, for example on-line, or in the case of teachers or computer programmers, doing preliminary work away from the work place. This doesn't work if people have some more problem illnesses though.

However, in some work places now, cut backs are making things difficult. For example, in schools where conventionally there were supply teachers to fill in gaps, in some areas there are hardly any supply teachers, and if a few teachers are ill, then classes are cut.

Another type of work is train driving. I can remember complaints years ago about some "spare" drivers going in to work each day, and sitting in a room waiting for trains to drive, and "obviously" costing their empoyers and the "travelling public" and the "taxpayer" money. Now I hear that that in the current economic climate there are complaints about cancelled trains due to the fact that a few drivers called in sick, and there were no members of backup crews to drive some trains. I have recently experienced that - not with a cancelled train, but with an overcrowded train with cancelled seat reservations, due to the cancellation of one or two prevous trains.

Management policies are often as one might expect - the managers have to prove how idiotic they are in order to gain promotion. This is more important than the effect on anything else - the environment, the public, customer satisfaction, effectiveness, efficiency etc.

[Macca]

Management policies are often as one might expect - the managers have to prove how idiotic they are in order to gain promotion. This is more important than the effect on anything else - the environment, the public, customer satisfaction, effectiveness, efficiency etc.

So true.

[struth]

So true.

ditto, although tbh most are already that idiotic and thus fit into job well. A company deserves what it has, management, and to an extent workers...but itss led by management, all the way down the tree.
So there is no real excuse for it. Hire the right folk and the problem disappears