Saturday, December 08, 2007

Going to work can make you sick

As already mentioned I was off for most of last week with the dreaded lurgy. However, I used some of the time to catch up on my reading of the “Safety and Health Practitioner”, which is the house mag of IOSH. Read a very interesting article (July 07) by researcher Zara Whysall that “Presenteeism” at work is a “larger drain on productivity than either absenteeism or short-term disability”. “Which can have potentially catastrophic effects on both individual and organisational health”! So much for “Sick note Britain”

It concludes that it is better for the individual (as well as the organisation) to stay at home and recover rather come into work and infect everyone else (and I suppose anyone sitting near them on the buses or train). They also tend to recover more quickly at home.

Fair enough this seems common sense– most of us have come across the saying “Coughs and sneezes spread diseases...” (This was first put on public information service posters in World War Two)

Controversially, she also thought that research showed that workers who come into work despite being unwell may mean that their illness is unnoticed and is allowed to become more serious. Research into male civil servants showed “.....those that did not take any sick leave over the three year study period were more likely to experience serious coronary events than those unhealthy employees with moderate levels of sickness absenteeism”.

You can imagine this happening in practice. Someone who is so worried say about losing their job if they are sick, would come into work and ignores chest pains and other early signs of heart disease. Instead of getting the condition controlled by timely treatment they carry on working and they have a serious attack.

Organisations which have too harsh sickness policies could actually being making things worse not only for their staff but also their own bottom-line.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Are you familiar with the findings of the ongoing Whitehall II Health and Stress Study?

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/whitehallII/index.htm

Anonymous said...

Public employees love their sick time off!

John Gray said...

Hi Owen

Thanks for that. I think this research was one of the sources for Whysall.

John Gray said...

Hi Anon

“Public employees love their sick time off!....”

Not me sunshine – I’m Private Sector!!!

Anonymous said...

Lets see long hours , short holidays, longer time to retirement, rotten low wages, some of the worse bosses in the EU, and moaning government about sick note UK.

And a Government which uses the media to try and get people to do what work more. For less.

If your sick your sick.

John Gray said...

sort of true anon