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One of the unintended consequences of giving employees sick days and not letting them work from is that people come into work when they really shouldn’t.
People want to maximize the number of days they have off, and they don’t want to spend them stuck at home while sick. I’d imagine that organizations that use a paid time off (PTO) bank with no distinctions between sick, personal and vacation time struggle with this even more.
So what happens? People come to work when they’re pretty sick - not horribly ill, but relatively sick - and spread their germs to everyone else in the office. They don’t function quite as well, and neither do the people they get sick.
Of course, they function well enough to get some work done. They’re just not top notch. Why not let them work from home?
They get to keep their time off for when they can really enjoy it. You get work continuity and a healthier workforce.
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Comments
10.06.09
Amen, Chris!
I guess it's an issue of people abusing the policy, but then again, people who abuse the policy are likely abusing other policies too. So what's the difference? One day they'll get caught and that's that.
I'm interested to hear what other people have to say about this. Everyone seems to be freaking out about flu season (me too), and it would be nice if the organizations we work for became more proactive about it.
-RP
10.06.09
You know Ryan, with the Swine Flu thing, and everyone recommending social distancing to minimize the spread, working from home if/when possible seems like a pretty sound policy to me.
10.06.09
I think that having the option to work from home is an amazing benefit. I am in the engineering & technology industry and I think that is something that our companies do well.
It just so happened that I was sick with the flu this last week (not H1N1 thank goodness) and I was able to login from home and complete a few minor tasks on my sickest days. I am definitely one of those people who HATE wasting PTO hours being sick so if I am capable of doing work while I'm home sick, you better believe I will.
My company makes that very easy for me and luckily I have a job that is very do-able from home.
Another benefit of letting people work from home is you get more productivity from people when there is a deadline crunch. When trying to complete some really difficult deadlines in the past, I was more productive splitting my time between working at the office and working at home.
I do believe that working from home is not for everyone though.
10.06.09
Totally agree. I work in a NPO where we get 3 weeks PTO per year, no separate sick time, and as the weather cools, you can watch the flu, bronchitis and colds cut employees down as illnesses move through the cube farm. Everyone comes to work sick, and it's hard not to, when the PTO allotted isn't really generous enough to allow you to be sick AND take a decent vacation or two...if we were allowed to take non-paid sick days, I'd be happy with that, and so would others.
We are allowed to work from home with supervisor approval, but I'm the only employee in the org that works on a desktop, so I don't have the work at home option.
10.06.09
@Susie - You're absolutely right. Some people just don't work as well at home. I'm glad you have the opportunity to work from home pretty liberally, though!
@Jenn - Sorry to hear! I've been in your situation before - it's not fun!
10.07.09
I remember a few years back when we had 2 months of coughing around the department, it was a literal domino effect, where one row was coughing this week & then the week after it was the next row ...
Actually, I took a sick day today, because I
- don't want spread the germs around
- don't want to get worse & have to take even more days off
- learned my lesson
-------
Although there are people dealing with really bad policy on this, such as:
http://evilhrlady.blogspot.com/2009/09/this-is-why-people-think-hr-is-st...
In that situation, I doubt most would take that sick day (esp they can get penalized later in performance review)
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