Do you go to work when you know you are contagious? Chances are, the answer to that is yes, according to a new study by Staples, which finds that 90 percent of American workers go to work when they are knowingly contagious. This is up from 80 percent who said they came to work while sick last year. Only 60 percent self identified as coming to work while sick in 2011.
The increase in sickness in the office is not because people don’t understand disease transmission. Staples found that:
To keep reading (and make yourself start feeling sick, right now!) click here: 90 percent of workers come to work when sick.
It would be a lot easier to stay home if employers would LET you stay home. Many food service workers don’t have any PTO, vacation, or sick days they can use to recover. I repeat–food service workers. (But others too.)
I’m lucky with my new company–they do not want us in the office if we are sick. They’re very generous about taking time to recover. And I have the option to stay home and work from there if I’m feeling okay enough to get on the computer but not well enough to be out and about.
Interesting that nobody in the article speculated about why people are coming to work sick. It’s got to be a combo of what Elizabeth said and the trend to give PTO that includes sick days. I am salaried – I have been salaried for years. And I am now, for the first time, in a job where I have defined sick time. (It is included in my PTO.) I have never had this before – in other jobs, I have vacation time. If I was sick, I didn’t come to work. If I had gotten sick too frequently, I expect my manager would have had something to say.
I once worked for a manager who would not ‘allow’ sick days for anyone – no matter what sickness – even the stomach flu! We would actually be reprimanded if we called in or had to go home early. It’s just down right poor for business. When a manager doesn’t allow an employee to have a day or 2 to recover and rest from a flu or really bad cold, it slows that person’s productivity down, infects the rest of the staff and customers, and it looks, really, really aweful to customers when an employee has to excuse themselves to run to the washroom to vomit!!! (This manager would ingore customer comments about it, and sometimes even scold the employee when they returned from the washroom – in front of the customer even!) I am so glad that I am now working with a company that understands that employees are human, and that I am the one who does the scheduling/ staff balancing, so I can ensure that the sick people can stay home and I can rearrange staff to cover their duties if needed.
The United States is one of the few countries in the world that don’t require employees to provide sick time. I think there’s only 7 or so that don’t and they are all third world nations. Food for thought.