With the cold and flu season fast approaching, the questions that come with this season is when is someone too sick to go to work? Australian’s as a whole, work hard, and there is no doubt that unless you are on your death bed there is an unspoken rule that you need to be at work, but are we really doing more damage than good by being at work whilst sick?
There are many things that need to be taken into consideration when going to work sick:-
- are you too sick to be productive at work?
- do you work in an open plan office? Are you going to make work colleagues sick?
- Is two days off work sick worth two weeks you could potentially be off in the long run?
Most employers in Australia give the mandatory 10 days of annual sick leave, does that mean you have to take all 10 days since that’s what you are given? There are many questions that people ask when it comes to being sick and taking time off work. I am always hearing of people never having a sick day ever and never taking annual leave.. I tend to think that is a different level of being unhealthy.. but that’s a whole new blog..
My personal opinion is that if it’s going to be more beneficial for you to take 2 or 3 days off work to get better, than do it… there is nothing worse than sitting in an open plan office and having someone coughing and sneezing all over you for the first few days when they are most contagious and spreading their germs through the whole office and making everyone sick and the whole cycle going for weeks.
When you have a small office of 10 people, you are more than likely going to have more than 1 person off sick at some stage or another during the typical cold and flu season so try and contain it as much as possible.
My advice is that employers need to encourage people to stay at home when they are sick – the end of result, fewer germs being spread around, less people being off work sick and more productive employees at work.
Hope everyone stays healthy this cold and flu season.