Dealing With Recurring Illness In The Workplace

Dealing with recurring illness in the workplace can be a tricky proposition for any company.Cut the person affected and replace them with someone else too soon, and the company risks making employees feel like an unvalued commodity.Cut them too late and the company may risk damage to the bottom line.When the person is a top performer, it is even harder to decide when to release the person.Much like Shaquille O'Neal or Michael Jordan, even at 60 percent, they were better than most of the players in the NBA.If the person who suffers from the recurring illness is in their category, the company has a tough decision to make because it sets up a precedent for later down the road when a marginal performer gets a recurring disease.

Regardless of how the company and its executives look at their employees, no one wants to be an unvalued commodity.It is demeaning to be just a brick in the wall or a cog in the machine.People want to know that they are valued not just for their performance in the workplace but also as human beings.It is an intrinsic value based on our common humanness that we strive to achieve and that should be given without question.Unfortunately, capitalism's propensity for dealing with people as human resources rather than human beings tends to stifle creativity and spur on man's inhumanity to man.
For a company to deal successfully with someone who has a recurring illness, it is important to realize what the impact on other employees will be.Water cooler talk flies faster than emails these days, and it can dramatically change the happiness level and satisfaction that people have in their workplaces.Even for a marginal performer who is ill, the thoughts of others become "if the company treats that person in such a way, how will they treat me?" For someone who is a top performer, the thought process gets worse."If they can do that to him, what can they do to me?"
Still corporations no longer feel that they have an obligation to the people who do the work.Instead, they have an obligation to their shareholders to squeeze out every ounce of profitability available in the company.In many cases, tearing the band aid off and accepting a little bit of ill will on the part of the employees seems like the best and easiest way to deal with the problem.
A better way is to keep the person on in a reduced capacity.Maybe they cannot do the job they did before, but there is another job that they can do.Maybe they can train people to do what they did.If the company can find an equitable way to keep the person on board, it can also find a way to use that to garner good will amongst the other employees so that they will feel better about the company and become more productive.
One good way to do this is to offer a sick leave donation program.If the person who is experiencing the recurring illness has used up all of the sick days available to him or her, other employees can donate their sick leave to that person.Everyone wins.Employees feel good about themselves and about the company, and the person who is ill experiences less of a monetary issue.A benefit event could also be held to help raise money to find a cure for the recurring disease.This gives people the opportunity to feel empowered and to feel good about themselves and their workplace.