Now that a lot of people work from home, are they expected to work when sick?

[Costello]

With the pandemic a lot of people have switched to 'work from home' as default. So there comes a question...
(Just asking out of curiosity, I don't mean anything by it)

Do employers ask their staff to continue working even when sick? Since they're at home anyway.
Does sick leave mean anything anymore since the employee will be at home anyway?

I'm imagining a situation where an employee was in an accident and has both legs broken.
Previously, he wouldnt be able to come to the office so he would be on sick leave (or something) for months.
But with work from home, technically, the employee would still be able to use a computer and keep on working, right?

 

[The Catboy]

I would help an employer would recognize that someone being sick hinders their ability to work, even if they are working from home. I know my younger sister-in-law wasn't required to attend her online class when she was sick, but that's an online school.

 

[Jayinem]

I guess it depends on the job. I was work from home and was able to call out sick with covid, had to upload and email a doctor's note.

 

[Lather]

Well if a certain degree of illness does not prevent me from sitting at the computer and working, I won't apply for sick leave. After all, there is nothing to do at home.

 

[GeekyGuy]

It's an interesting question. Your example of someone being out of commission because of their legs could open up other options for them to continue certain types of work. On that front, I would think it would be a consideration of their contract and/or conditions of hire, and perhaps also the laws governing that sort of thing.

But...

If we're talking about being on sick leave because you're out with Covid, then no, I don't think (most) folks can do much to be helpful. They just gotta ride it out. Of course, it seems people get hit by it in different ways and in different degrees. When my wife and I got it here recently, holy...shi... Her, especially. [Unnecessary blathering about our experience with it.] It's taken her a good two weeks before she could go back to work and be of any help to her crew.

I think we will see plenty of supervisors trying to milk whatever they can from their employees, and well, I ain't gonna judge. But again, I think it will depend on the circumstances and such.

 

[Veho]

I'm imagining a situation where an employee was in an accident and has both legs broken.


(Just asking out of curiosity, I don't mean anything by it)

Riiiight...

Costello is in a bind. You see, p1ngpong said he would break both his legs if Costello didn't get him a PS5 for Christmas, so now he's weighing his options, looking for a silver lining


OK, serious now. If the illness is preventing you from doing your job then you can't be expected to work. But if you're able to work it's a good option to have. However, this shouldn't give your boss an excuse to force you to work or deny you sick leave.

 

[smf]

One of the things to consider is that if you work, especially if that work is stressful, while you are ill then it can cause long term health problems.

So it's not entirely cut and dried.

 

[AlexMCS]

It depends heavily on what the sickness is.
But in most cases, you are expected to relax when sick, not stress out with work.

 

[FAST6191]

As above it is going to be context dependent, both illness and nature of work, and whether alternative productive tasks can be found -- for years now seen any number of mechanics and such like get shoved on the front desk and chasing up parts (nice to have someone that knows something) on the phone, helping out apprentices with diagnostics (what have you done, what did you see, what do you think it might be is easy enough to do sitting on the sidelines, and do inspections afterwards) when they find themselves unable to put heavy parts in and out of cars or play with machines.
A lot of what I do involves sitting at the computer or workbench doing things with no particular interaction with others or time sensitivity. Might be hard to go onto a site if I am spewing from both ends once every few hours but can generally interrupt that if sitting in my house before returning to type some more, harder if I am running a call centre with constant volume out of my spare bedroom or being expected to attend meetings (granted I try very hard not to do phone calls and would never do call centre of any form, even the "good" ones, and feel similarly about meetings). If I had whatever I had in Feb 2020 where I could barely get out of bed, 4 days in I made the Herculean effort of walking to the end of the drive to get post before coming back to sleep off the exertion over the next 2 hours (1 week before and 1 after I quite happily walked some 16km/10 miles cross country just because I was bored). That made things rather harder to get things done.

In general I expect employers to attempt to extract all the useful work, and then some more besides, from their employees as that way the best profits theoretically lie. As such the larger shift to remote stuff (I have been setting such things up for small companies for some 15 years at this point, had it for myself for longer still) will probably change the nature of such things.

 

[Stwert]

All employers will be different, but I’d say it depends on two things. 1. Your job and 2. The nature of the illness.

If for example you have to stare at a monitor all day and you have a migraine (a real migraine, not the bad headaches some people seem to think are migraines, yet they can still go shopping, faff on their computer, play games, or anything that’s not lying in a dark quiet room, scared to move because you’ll vomit everywhere), then there’s no way you’re going to be able to sit and use a computer, so day off as far as I’m concerned.

If however, you’re using the excuse I’ve recently heard from one of my wife’s co-workers, my dog isn’t well. You can sure as hell still work in-between dealing with your dog.

Me? I’ve worked from home for over a decade and I’ve yet to find anything that actually prevents me from working - unless I choose not to, like when I’m outside smoking and posting on forums because I can’t be arsed working

 

[djpannda]

yea its a Double Edge Sword. I started working from Home Before Covid. Don't get me Wrong I love it but the sucky part was if the office closes early for a party or Holiday, I still had to be clocked in.. and no More Snow DAYS..

 

[eyeliner]

Sick -> Medical appointment -> Papers -> Send to employer -> Sick Leave

Unless it is something mild, like the sniffles. Just excuse yourself from meetings.

 

[krakenx]

As far as I know, there are no federal or state regulations around sick time, so it depends entirely on your employer. At the company I work for, you accrue a small amount of sick time and can use it whenever you don't feel well. If you take 3 days or more in a row, you need a doctor's note. If you run out of sick days, you can take unpaid. When work from home started, the same policy applied, and Covid didn't really change that. Work if you feel up to it and don't if you can't. There is still an expectation to meet critical deadlines though, but procrastinating is your own fault.

Meanwhile my girlfriend had a horrible employer that required a doctors note any time you called out sick, and it was all unpaid. She spent 4 hours in urgent care with a 102 degree fever and a $200 bill for the visit, which is more than she cleared in a week after tax and health insurance that doesn't actually cover anything.

I feel like people with somewhat good employers don't really understand just how bad most of the other people in the USA have it. I knew Covid would devastate the US because we basically don't have any healthcare, safety net or workers rights, so a large chunk of the population is forced to go to work sick, spread it to everyone else, and refuse to get treatment until they are about to die. It's no wonder that those people would choose to quit such jobs in mass given the choice between catching Covid and accruing a lifetimes worth of medical debt and accruing less debt just staying home unemployed.

 

[AncientBoi]

I agree with most of the replies. I myself of course am retired. On the otherside of this, I was going to reply to this question, but I got sick... LoL

25 years in security related work
15 years in transportation work

In those, I believe I took only 2 days of non-related sick days off, but report them as such.

In my time, most of my employers Insisted that you work, even with sickness, or injuries.

 

[Dr_Faustus]

I doubt the idea would pertain to the concept of having to work if you are sick if you are working from home or not. Its not a simple case of "oh I am infected and put in quarantine" and more of "I am so ripped from my skull sick that even getting out of bed to take a piss is taking every last bit of willpower out of me to make happen". There is a difference between the two here, and most jobs especially in this case will know and honor this.

After all what is the point in fake being sick when you are already home? If you are that lazy that even the idea of remote work is a pain in the arse for you than you simply do not deserve to have an income at all, and just live in their parents basement or some shit. Some people would kill to have the option of remote work. Abusing it like that just ruins the concept for everyone else.

 

[appleburger]

Nah, if anything most employers are being more flexible since the pandemic hit. We can walk away from our desks and go for a hike in the middle of the day if we want, as long as our work gets done and you still attend any meetings.

In the tech field, at least, most jobs calling us up for interviews are throwing out that they have unlimited vacation and sick time. People tend to take less days off with this system, but I love it and still get about 5-6 weeks off, and always get my sick days.

 

[Dr_Faustus]

Nah, if anything most employers are being more flexible since the pandemic hit. We can walk away from our desks and go for a hike in the middle of the day if we want, as long as our work gets done and you still attend any meetings.

In the tech field, at least, most jobs calling us up for interviews are throwing out that they have unlimited vacation and sick time. People tend to take less days off with this system, but I love it and still get about 5-6 weeks off, and always get my sick days.

Damn, I need to get something like that. I work in IT but my manager is an old world libertarian so I do not get anything like that. Hell I had to come in today despite being on the east coast after that snow storm and despite nothing being shoveled out and cleared. My freaking car got trapped in the snow in the driveway even, but it does not matter to him.

I am hoping on finding something better soon if luck comes my way. Just trying to stay in the same field which is hard out here.

 

[appleburger]

Damn, I need to get something like that. I work in IT but my manager is an old world libertarian so I do not get anything like that. Hell I had to come in today despite being on the east coast after that snow storm and despite nothing being shoveled out and cleared. My freaking car got trapped in the snow in the driveway even, but it does not matter to him.

I am hoping on finding something better soon if luck comes my way. Just trying to stay in the same field which is hard out here.

If you have IT experience, throw your resume on Dice - I'd expect you to be getting a lot of calls. The market is really hot right now. I've had my resume removed from most job sites and still get recruiters hitting me up for remote work.

If you want any advice or help feel free to DM me; I'm decent with job hunting in the tech field.

 

[cearp]

I'm imagining a situation where an employee was in an accident and has both legs broken.
Previously, he wouldnt be able to come to the office so he would be on sick leave (or something) for months.
But with work from home, technically, the employee would still be able to use a computer and keep on working, right?

Technically yeah I guess you could work with both legs broken, but at least initially, I am sure you will either be in very high levels of pain and thus not able to do the job well, or, under strong pain medication, and similarly not able to do the job well.

For the employer, it depends how important the wellbeing of your employees is.
If there is a worker whose mother died the night before, good if they can have some time off, it's it many contracts and not a crazy concept.
Thankfully most jobs have moved on from working your body to the core down in the mines digging for coal.

In my time, most of my employers Insisted that you work, even with sickness, or injuries.

Not good if you have the measles!


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presenteeism


For me personally, if I have a cold and I'm sneezing a lot, depending on how bad it is, I can probably work fine from home.
But going into the office, being sick around other people, it's bad for us all in a way.

 

[Marc_LFD]

Just because someone's home and working from home doesn't mean they're okay to do it.

It all depends on the illness. If someone broke his leg or arm, the pain is too much and same goes if it's a terrible headache.

This reminds me of when I was a kid and thought being sick would be great to spend the day playing Nintendo. Yeah, no, that didn't happen (I wish).