For workers, deciding whether to call in sick is a balancing act between listening to their bodies and meeting deadlines. For employers, it's a matter of meeting productivity goals without creating a culture that encourages sick workers to report for duty and degrades the office's overall health.
While there's no cure-all for the "sick season," there are ways to make it a little better for all.
Healthy doses of common sense and self-knowledge can answer most sick-day questions, said Dr. Richard Lewis, director of occupational and employee health at the Cleveland Clinic. If you're mildly achy or have a little scratchiness in your throat but otherwise feel OK, it's probably safe to go to work, he said.
The flip side is true if you're feverish, coughing constantly and fighting off a flood of mucus and other secretions — if you're clearly contagious, in other words.
Being smart about staying home is critical for employees in contact with at-risk individuals — say in day-care centers, hospitals and nursing homes.
Wash those mitts
If going to work is unavoidable, then bone up on your illness etiquette, said Dr. George Kikano, chairman of the department of family medicine at Case Western Reserve University/University Hospitals. Tell co-workers you're sick, cover your mouth when you cough, avoid direct contact with people and steer clear of communal areas.
"You shouldn't be walking around the cafeteria touching the silverware," Kikano said.
That's all well and good — unless you're the one whose desk is next to the sick co-worker. In that case, you need to play defense. The most effective thing you can do, Lewis and Kikano said, is to wash your hands — often.
As a last resort, if your co-worker is practicing bad cough etiquette or making little effort to keep from spreading germs, you are within your rights to complain to your supervisor, Lewis said.
But what about deadlines?
Businesses that are attentive to employee health — and more flexible about days off — help themselves by boosting morale and productivity. That's according to Dr. John Hoover, a family therapist who has also spent years studying organizational dysfunction. His book "How to Work for an Idiot" was published last year.
"The traditional ways that bosses deal with time off and employee problems tend to compound the problems," Hoover said. "And that winds up with very demotivated employees and much lower productivity, which is what they were trying to avoid."
Bosses who send sick workers home and avoid a culture of "presenteeism" — that encourages ill employees to stay on the job — are "light-years ahead," he said.
For small companies, keeping sick employees away from the office is a simple matter of risk management. Joel Cheesman, director of e-marketing for CareerBoard LLC, a Cleveland-based jobs Web site with 10 employees, said his firm tends to err on the side of caution.
"If we were all to get sick, we'd be shut down," Cheesman said.
But Fred Bidwell, chief executive of Malone Advertising in Akron, Ohio, said there are times when the work just can't wait.
"We're in a deadline business," said Bidwell, whose company has 170 employees. "And sometimes those deadlines are totally fixed. You have to make them. It doesn't matter if you're on death's door."
In those cases, Bidwell said, when sick workers "fall on their sword" to finish a project, he encourages them to take a couple of days off when the work is done.
Many companies try to avoid the sick-day debate by switching to personal days that cover any situation that requires time off, whether it's illness, caring for a sick child or being home for the plumber, said Jill Ellingson, an assistant professor in the department of management and human resources at Ohio State University's Fisher College of Business.
"You avoid the entire discussion about what's too sick to go to work," Ellingson said. "It's easier to administrate."
Sick days, arguably, aren't what they used to be. You might decide to stay at home, but there, calling you as you watch another regrettable Jerry Springer episode, is your laptop and high-speed Internet connection. Technology can bring the office to your house, even if you're sick as a dog.
But Lewis said a day off should be just that.
"If you're sick, really sick, don't try to do anything," he said. "Go to sleep and turn off the phone. You need to let yourself heal." |
