New research has found that the amount of sick days taken by workers in 2012 have decreased from 7.7 days in 2011 to 6.8 days this year*.
It’s thought that the reason the numbers are down are because employees would rather go to work when they were ill rather than run the risk of getting a mark against their name. Employers have been using the amount of days off in redundancy decisions as an important factor when choosing between workers.
I think it is a real shame that people are being penalised for being ill. Some people do lie and decide to take a day off because they just can’t be bothered, but some other people are genuinely ill and it’s unfair that they are penalised for this. Why is it better to come into work and be ill in the office? I have to admit that sometimes I wish that people with a bad cold or the flu just stayed at home rather than being a hero and coming into work. I don’t want to get ill as well!
The study also found that days off due to stress and mental health problems are on the rise, which doesn’t surprise me. If you are working in a stressful environment and you feel that it is affecting your physical or mental health, showing up for work could only make you worse. A company that I used to work for offered ‘duvet days’ to their staff so that if you really felt like you couldn’t come to work that day, you didn’t have to. I think that they are a great idea that should be implemented across more companies; people would feel a lot more comfortable if they could just take a day for personal reasons. Although I realise that there must be an element of trust between employees and their employers for this scheme to work as people could take advantage.
Our physical and mental health is so important and I think that it should be seen that way by employers. Surely an employee who is given the time to recover at home is more valuable than someone spreading germs?