“Being really sick has become a real holiday for many workers,” says Ann Francke, chief executive of the Chartered Management Institute, reflecting on how the combination of Covid-19 and regular working from home has created new uncertainty about the rules on when and how we do our jobs.
“It’s the new era of ambiguity: Are you well enough to work? Are you sick enough to take time off? Who decides?”
The arrival of a rampant Covid outbreak in the summer has led many employees to ask these questions for the first time in many months, and managers are equally baffled about when and how their staff should work while juggling illness, holidays and family commitments.
The rise of home working has particularly meant that rules can be opaque for staff dealing with the kind of symptoms that suspected cases of Covid and other cold-like illnesses bring. Often these are mild enough to make workers doubt their symptoms, which is made worse by a lack of testing. Few workplaces currently mandate the need for testing for suspected cases. COVID-19.
HR professionals are concerned that there is a lack of clarity about when a person is sick enough to take time off, when many office jobs can easily be done from home, near a bed.
One manager An employee at a large financial services firm describes the feeling many face as “sick”: feeling bad enough that you don’t want to drag yourself into the office, but not sick enough to turn off your computer and stay in bed.
The problem here, he says, is that people who do end up working (likely in ways they would have avoided before remote work became so prevalent) can often take longer to improve or risk getting worse.
The CIPD, the professional body for human resources and staff development, found in a survey of more than 5,000 workers last year that more than half of employees had done their job despite feeling unwell. The pressure to do so, it found, came from employees themselves rather than the boss.
Amanda Arrowsmith, director of people and transformation at the CIPD, says there is now a risk of people “being sick for longer” given the uncertainty over whether they should take time off.
The problem is not necessarily with management, who may not even see or know what their employees are doing or feeling if they regularly work from home.
“Working from home blurs the lines between sickness and work time,” says CMI’s Francke. She adds that the focus is now often on the needs of an organisation, rather than the worker. “Many workplaces have policies designed to stop the spread of illness to others – it’s not about the wellbeing of the individual.”
COVID-19 cases have risen sharply in the UK this summer, with the number of people hospitalised with COVID-19 being around double what it was in April by the end of June. While those figures are no longer an accurate estimate of infections, with fewer people getting tested or developing severe enough symptoms, businesses are seeing a rise in cases among staff in the wake of Euro football celebrations and attendance at summer gatherings and music festivals.
And it’s not just COVID-19. Cases of whooping cough, which can take several weeks to clear up, are also on the rise this year along with other colds and sore throats.
The UK’s workplace health regulator, the Health and Safety Executive, says that if a worker has Covid-19 they should try to stay at home, but businesses no longer need to factor the issue into their risk assessment or have specific measures in place. For many, it is still unclear whether or not there should be a new label around Covid, rather than a more traditional cold or flu.
For workers, employment arbitration service Acas says that when someone has been off work for COVID and is ready to return to work, they “should speak to their employer as soon as possible” but “there is currently no legally required period of time during which a person with COVID must remain off work”.
Acas adds that it is the employer’s responsibility to decide how to record absence if it is not safe for a worker to return to the workplace, including where a worker tests positive but is not ill. In such cases, it says, “it is unlikely to be sickness absence”.
The problem is that illnesses like Covid affect people in different ways – from barely noticing any symptoms to being completely bedridden – which can make counselling difficult, HR executives say.
“During [the pandemic] “There were clear guidelines. Now people are asking themselves what they should do,” says Arrowsmith.
The CIPD survey found the highest rate of sickness absence in a decade (around 7.8 days per employee per year) due to the impact of Covid on the UK workforce.
But Arrowsmith points to another worrying statistic: the CIPD has found that “presenteeism” is common, with around three-quarters of respondents in a survey last year reporting that they were aware of people working when they were sick during the previous 12 months.
Nearly two-thirds of respondents also reported some form of “job churn,” where employees use allocated time off, such as annual leave, to do their job despite feeling unwell rather than recording those days as sick leave.
Sally Wilson, a senior researcher at the Institute for Employment Studies, says many workplaces are still trying to figure out the “new normal” in terms of how workers should deal with illness and when they should feel able to work.
But he says working from home has also brought benefits, with some workers embracing the flexibility of being able to work the hours they need rather than feeling forced into an office.
“People tend to feel worse in the morning, for example, so a flexible schedule can be a big help,” Wilson says.
CIPD’s Arrowsmith agrees that there are advantages for those who can work from home when dealing with minor ailments or conditions that can be better treated at home. “For some people it works – they don’t have to face a journey on the tube or in a car, but they feel they can continue working.”
For management and HR experts, the key to adapting to the new rules on when to work when sick is communication: managers need to know their staff well enough to know when something is wrong, regardless of whether they are in the office or not, and staff need to be able to rely on their managers for support and understanding. The CIPD has found that employees tend not to discuss their health problems with their boss or employer.
Arrowsmith says “good line management is about recognising when people are sick and having good communication so they feel they can take time off when they need it.”
Francke adds: “Managers need to create an environment that is respectful of employees and what they need to stay healthy and productive. There are all kinds of nuances in the workplace these days, so we need to be flexible on both counts.”