The Change in Sick Days

Prior to covid, organisations were watching their sick day levels closely – identifying trends that were impacting the business – from culture to productivity and ultimately profitability. But then COVID hit, and most people moved over to the working from home model.

Previously, when people woke up feeling under the weather, they would either call in sick and stay to home for the day to recuperate or they would make their way into the office to try and get through the day (yes, this was me). But this would mean you would put your team and the larger business at risk of catching what you were bringing in.

With the working from home model, it often meant that when people woke up in the morning not feeling 100 %, they would still get up, make their way to the home office and manage their day. This meant that they were able to give 60 – 80 % to their role for that day as they were able to work from home – where they could keep up to date with their tasks, but also not go in and spread it around the office… Contrary to popular belief – sometimes sharing is NOT caring!

Organisations have seen a drop in the number of sick days taken, based on the above which has helped with driving productivity and results while not impacting the team. The challenge comes in that it can take longer for employees to recuperate as they are not resting up completely. So it does come to a balanced approach – and sometimes a call must be made when someone is ill that they need to switch off and take the day off and come back ready for the next challenge…

An interesting side note - more recently we are finding that the calls that used to come into let us know that someone had woken up with a sore throat or congestion has changed to more frequent tummy issues… Perhaps this is due to companies asking for a COVID test prior to someone returning to work or, based on the fact we are working from home we are not being exposed to as many viruses as we were prior to the age of flexible working.