I'm Too Productive to be Infected

Whether tis nobler to suffer the coughs and runny noses of productivity, or to take arms against a sea of germs - that is the question. Classical literature aside, sick employees in the workplace is nothing to sneeze at. Although a large number of companies have paid time off policies which include paid sick leave, a "2010 study by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago found that nearly 40 percent of workers whose companies gave them paid sick days still reported going to work with a contagious illness such  as the flu" as stated by Rex W. Huppke in his I Just Work Here column for the Sun Sentinel. 

To make matters worse, 80 percent of food service and hotel workers are not covered by policies allowing paid sick leave - so, that means you can safely assume a great many of them are heading to work with the sniffles on any given day. Well, the question of why the second group of employees goes to work while sick is easy - they need the pay. Why, though, does the first group - employees with paid sick leave - arrive at the workplace carrying their germy baggage? The answer is stigma. The stigma attached to calling in sick. The fear of being labeled an unproductive, disloyal employee who is not a team player and, worse, is a "goof-off". 

The flip side is the organization's concern: a dip in productivity (assuming from employees who just wanted an unscheduled day off). Some organizations have implemented formal incentive programs to both reduce call outs and reward employees with compensation for unused leave. Such programs often act to protect productivity by stipulating consequences for employees who use all their sick leave, according to the 2010 SHRM study Examining Paid Leave in the Workplace. 

Let's go back to the employees who are actually sick and who feel compelled to share their rueful state with fellow employees? Perhaps that can be addressed by the organization as well  - through company culture rather than formal policy. As Huppke states: "A worker should never feel like he has to drag his weary body into the office just to be marked present for the day. And a manager should be able to trust the workers he or she oversees and believe that when they call in sick, they're truly sick, or have a sick child to tend to".