What’s the current situation like in your industry and your cohort with regards to calling sick?
I would say that my experience is probably an outlier (airline pilot). Being in a cockpit is one place you definitely do not want to be when you are under the weather. But that just doesn’t mean physical it can also mean mental as well. My previous company ran (what at the time seemed normal) an attendance program. When COVID and the associated cuts hit, this program was laid bare and I found myself at philosophical odds how they managed attendance. It was the proverbial “straw that broke the camels back” that caused me to no longer want to work for them, nor be associated with them anymore at that time.
I volunteer a little bit at funerals in my local church, it’s a big church and between that and being in south florida their is a lot of burying going on. So I feel a bit more in touch with death than an average person my age. Nobody on their death bed ever regretted not working more, thats for certain. And I think that gets to the heart of changing attitudes towards taking a “sick day”.
Being 46 I feel like I straddle both worlds of sick view… the old one of “I never take a sick day” (I remember atttendance awards in elementary school – I philosophically disagree with these) and the new world of not hesitating to use a sick time. Now granted calling sick in my industry has no tangible effects on my co-workers or customers.
I was pretty much a go into work or school unless you really were physically just out of it. Definitely been a shift at work, especially after COVID, to the “stay home if you’re sick, so you don’t spread the infection” mindset. Not sure I’ve really adopted that mindset. I’d not even really consider myself sick unless I was pretty incapacitated.
Pre-COVID when we were all in the office, the general rule was stay home if you need to, and the rest of us cubicle dwellers would give you the stink eye if you were obviously sick and in the office. That’s easy to spot physical illness, but mental (need a day, not actual illness) wasn’t so easy to spot. Some of my team worked together for close to 20 years, so they knew each other very well and could spot if someone was “not right”. Most of us worked remotely one day per week already so if you were sick, or needed a mental day, and under a deadline you could likely work from home.
I don’t have any data to back this up, but now that we’re 100% remote, I don’t notice as many people sending out the “I’m sick and taking a day off” messages. I know myself personally, I’ll try to push through some. Not that I feel any pressure to continue to work, but since I’m already home and we have a 12-hour business window, it’s somewhat easy to clock 8 hours in that window if I really wanted or needed to. Removing the commute from the work equation makes working when under the weather a bit easier.
I can’t begin to imagine the flexibility your type of work must provide you! – I can’t also imagine how difficult it must be to escape said “work” when the day ends. Catch 22 I guess. Thats a whole other discussion, the difficulty of switching off work in todays connected world. One of the great things in my industry is once we set the parking brake we leave the work on the jet. Time off truly is time off.
The flexibility comes with a price. Since we’ve gone fully remote, we hire people from coast-to-coast. So now meetings are scheduled any time of the day. I may want to knock off at 2 PM but have to log back in for a 5 PM meeting because someone in PT can’t be available until 4 PM their time. And forget having an uninterrupted lunch time, that no longer exists. But it’s great to slip away to the grocery store ro doctor’s appointment.
I work for a law firm and we worked at home for over two years with no problem. They have signs posted at work at the entry doors, if you’re sick, stay home. So if you’re sick, then it’s easy to work from home. My issue is that I pretty much have allergies 3/4 of the year, so if I have a runny nose or sneezing, do I have allergies, do I have a cold, do I have Covid, do I have some other some thing? Prior to March 2020, I would go into work. Now it’s just easier to work from home.
Regarding working from home and turning work off, I have no problem with that. For attorneys and people worried about their billable hour goals, I’m sure that is not the case. Or if you’re the partner or senior associate, who is the client contact, clients are now used to contacting people pretty much 24-7. But for what I do, I have a very flexible schedule, which is great. But I even had that prior to the pandemic. It was actually one of the big reasons that I took the job relocation. I don’t think I could have a job where I had to punch a clock or be somewhere at a specific time.
I HATE when people come into work who are clearly sick. Its a work cultural thing that needs to go away. The “old school” folks who come into work sick are just making everyone else sick. Just stay home.
I manage a team of 11 engineers. I tell them to stay home (either work from home or use a sick day) if they are sick. They shouldn’t feel the pressure of having to come into the office if they aren’t 100%. We are issued enough sick days each year, that also roll over, so it’s pretty rare that anyone is out of sick days. Many of my team members have kids who get sick so I’m pretty understanding when I get a text late at night or in the morning that they need to work from home or use a sick day. All I ask is that you communicate, be professional, and don’t take advantage of the flexibility I give them. It’s interesting some of the in depth details I get about what symptoms their kids have. I don’t need the details, I trust them when they tell me they aren’t feeling well or a family member.
I think I’m pretty understanding and flexible but some of my peer managers are pretty strict about things like this.
Speaking as someone who sits in the corner office, I don’t want people in the building that can make others sick. A cold or stomach virus is one thing, and that is up to the employee, but if they have a fever or are hacking and coughing around people I generally encourage them to go home, especially the salaried people who get paid any way, but I do have a pretty liberal sick pay policy.
On a related note I had a guy call in sick last week because his wife needed to go to the hospital for testing. No problem. Then the next day he was walking around showing everyone the pictures from his son’s birthday party. When confronted he stated that he took a sick day because he never uses them. That’s a problem that I still haven’t decided how it will be handled. I’m still waiting on a recommendation from HR and the lower level supervisors.
As a note, our employee handbook doesn’t allow employees to use sick time as vacation time, but you can carry it over. I’m thinking about getting rid of sick time and adding 5 days of vacation to everyone, so they can just call in and it goes to the same place. I think the result, for the most part, would be the same for most and a little better for the few who never get sick.
Speaking as someone who sits in the corner office, I don’t want people in the building that can make others sick. A cold or stomach virus is one thing, and that is up to the employee, but if they have a fever or are hacking and coughing around people I generally encourage them to go home, especially the salaried people who get paid any way, but I do have a pretty liberal sick pay policy.
On a related note I had a guy call in sick last week because his wife needed to go to the hospital for testing. No problem. Then the next day he was walking around showing everyone the pictures from his son’s birthday party. When confronted he stated that he took a sick day because he never uses them. That’s a problem that I still haven’t decided how it will be handled. I’m still waiting on a recommendation from HR and the lower level supervisors.
As a note, our employee handbook doesn’t allow employees to use sick time as vacation time, but you can carry it over. **I’m thinking about getting rid of sick time and adding 5 days of vacation to everyone, so they can just call in and it goes to the same place. ** I think the result, for the most part, would be the same for most and a little better for the few who never get sick.
This is what we have. You get PTO, use it how you can or want. If I have days, I’m going to use them, regardless if you call them sick or vacation.
Interesting… I don’t envy having to manage people. I am a “DISC type S” so I would let it ride for now. (those in the know, know DISC)
My previous employer had a very authoritarian culture, and although they wouldn’t admit it, I know they knew. “Know Thyself” I say to them. When COVID hit they started monitoring and ranking attendance very aggressively. I wasn’t scared or intimidated by them and stood my ground on several occasions to which my managers always backed down because I was in the moral high ground. What I had a problem with was that because I was an American I knew I always had an ace in the whole in terms of alternative employment. So taking a stand on principled grounds was easier for me. My colleagues from other countries didn’t have that card in their deck. If they lost the job the other prospects were bleak at best. So the attendance numbers didn’t really reflect the reality of the situation. People were afraid to call out sick when necessary. I wasn’t about to be ranked and judged in an environment like that. Thats a big reason of why I walked away among others.
I know the WSJ article is behind a paywall so most can’t read it, but it goes into the “cost” of this changing approach to taking sick and the loss of productivity and the effect on the bottom line. I get it, no bottom line no work. We can all run ourselves off a cliff getting that bottom line also. I don’t have the answers. I will leave it up to that up to the managers.
Like mck414, I’m 100% remote as well, so pretty much everything they said, goes for me, as well
The only time since COVID (I still haven’t gotten it, BTW) that I’ve been sick enough where I would’ve called out for work, I put a 2-hour “private appointment” on my calendar, marked myself as “Out of Office” and took a huge nap; I used PTO on my timesheet
The funny thing was … that was a Monday; I had blood work done on Friday. Apparently, I’d been sick enough that a couple of metrics were fucked up - to the extent that I had to get my b/w redone to double-check
I’m still the (physically) healthy emmer-effer I’ve always been, don’t worry LOL
Speaking as someone who sits in the corner office, I don’t want people in the building that can make others sick. A cold or stomach virus is one thing, and that is up to the employee, but if they have a fever or are hacking and coughing around people I generally encourage them to go home, especially the salaried people who get paid any way, but I do have a pretty liberal sick pay policy.
On a related note I had a guy call in sick last week because his wife needed to go to the hospital for testing. No problem. Then the next day he was walking around showing everyone the pictures from his son’s birthday party. When confronted he stated that he took a sick day because he never uses them. That’s a problem that I still haven’t decided how it will be handled. I’m still waiting on a recommendation from HR and the lower level supervisors.
As a note, our employee handbook doesn’t allow employees to use sick time as vacation time, but you can carry it over. I’m thinking about getting rid of sick time and adding 5 days of vacation to everyone, so they can just call in and it goes to the same place. I think the result, for the most part, would be the same for most and a little better for the few who never get sick.
Sick days and vacation days is antiquated
20 vacation days plus 5 sick days should just be 25 PTO days
This is what we have. You get PTO, use it how you can or want. If I have days, I’m going to use them, regardless if you call them sick or vacation.
We switched to this about 10 years ago. I get 30 days a year and I never use that much. We can only accrue up to 1.5 times the annual amount, so when I get close to that, I just cash a bunch in. This year the cash out helped pay for a new HVAC. system.
PTO here too, though we can only accrue 200 hours at the turn of our FY. For some reason my company HATES paying out anything over, so much so that’s when pressure from the top really hits. Last summer I was projected to be over at the end of the FY, I received daily emails from HR, Teams chats from an MD, or my own boss reaching out asking me to take PTO. It became comical, to the point I just started cutting/pasting my response, “I am planning on taking 14 days of PTO in June, which will put me under 200 hours.”
Remote worker here with a very flexible manager. My personal rule to myself: If I’m sick and I cannot be productive at work I will take PTO. It does neither party good if the employee can’t produce. Better to rest up for the next day.
Now my wife is a healthcare worker, she has to walk a fine line, when she gets a cough it tends to linger for a week or two. She needs to make good judgement calls on whether she go in or not, whether she goes into patient rooms, etc.
As for the PTO vs vacation/sick days front. There are a lot of potential paid sick leave laws that may change how employers choose one way or the other.
Speaking as someone who sits in the corner office, I don’t want people in the building that can make others sick. A cold or stomach virus is one thing, and that is up to the employee, but if they have a fever or are hacking and coughing around people I generally encourage them to go home, especially the salaried people who get paid any way, but I do have a pretty liberal sick pay policy.
On a related note I had a guy call in sick last week because his wife needed to go to the hospital for testing. No problem. Then the next day he was walking around showing everyone the pictures from his son’s birthday party. When confronted he stated that he took a sick day because he never uses them. That’s a problem that I still haven’t decided how it will be handled. I’m still waiting on a recommendation from HR and the lower level supervisors.
As a note, our employee handbook doesn’t allow employees to use sick time as vacation time, but you can carry it over. I’m thinking about getting rid of sick time and adding 5 days of vacation to everyone, so they can just call in and it goes to the same place. I think the result, for the most part, would be the same for most and a little better for the few who never get sick.
Sick days and vacation days is antiquated
20 vacation days plus 5 sick days should just be 25 PTO days
When we first went to that people were irritated because we had something stupid like 6 weeks of sick time. But now I don’t even notice.
Since I went to WFH 3/16/2020 I don’t know if I have been sick other than picking up the flu from my family one Christmas. Oh and a bout of food poisoning from my wife’s family.
We have such a loose and free attitude towards calling off you don’t really know if someone is sick or if they just felt like taking a nap. You just put a note out either email or Teams and say you are stepping away for a couple hours. One day I just really didn’t feel like working and said I was taking a mental health day and I had everyone messaging me to make sure I was OK. And I just felt like playing golf instead of working.
I HATE when people come into work who are clearly sick. Its a work cultural thing that needs to go away. The “old school” folks who come into work sick are just making everyone else sick. Just stay home.
Agree. It’s selfish to come in when possibly infectious. Maybe with the exception of some types of jobs where you really leave your co-workers in a bind if you’re not physically there.
Long before COVID my work made a big celebratory thing for someone who worked 30 years without ever taking a sick day. I had mixed feelings. On one thing it’s great to celebrate that someone kept themselves broadly healthy, etc. But I know that person frequently came in almost certainly infectious and miserable to “keep the streak alive”, and that’s nothing to celebrate. Also that person got to “cash out” thousands upon thousands of hours of sick leave, which rubbed me the wrong way too. She was an admin type in a very quiet engineering lab, so her missing a day now and then would have had negligible effect on anyone.
Then there are the weirdos who have to be forced to use their annual leave - a whole other level of sick.
I HATE when people come into work who are clearly sick. Its a work cultural thing that needs to go away. The “old school” folks who come into work sick are just making everyone else sick. Just stay home.
Agree. It’s selfish to come in when possibly infectious. Maybe with the exception of some types of jobs where you really leave your co-workers in a bind if you’re not physically there.
Long before COVID my work made a big celebratory thing for someone who worked 30 years without ever taking a sick day. I had mixed feelings. On one thing it’s great to celebrate that someone kept themselves broadly healthy, etc. But I know that person frequently came in almost certainly infectious and miserable to “keep the streak alive”, and that’s nothing to celebrate. Also that person got to “cash out” thousands upon thousands of hours of sick leave, which rubbed me the wrong way too. She was an admin type in a very quiet engineering lab, so her missing a day now and then would have had negligible effect on anyone.
Then there are the weirdos who have to be forced to use their annual leave - a whole other level of sick.
That reminds me, I have 9 days to use up before the end of the year. Looks like 3 day weekends from here on out. We were planning on taking another week off this month but it never got scheduled so I have more than usual.