What to do if your employees are sick

It is a rare find if you have employees that never get sick. The eventuality of getting sick has a statistical high probability. So what do you do when your employees are sick? This article will examine why employees come to work sick, a few ways to help prevent sickness, and the legal steps that can be taken.

A survey was recently done by LifeCare revealing that 93 percent of employees have admitted to coming to work when they were sick enough to stay home. This survey identified the reasons these employees gave for coming to work in such a state.

1. 30 percent of the employees surveyed stated that the primary reason they came in to work sick was because they felt that they would be letting others down. This rationale is actually a fallacy as employees that come to work that ill reduce their productivity and increase the chances of infecting others causing an undue amount of stress within the office.
2. 26 percent of employees surveyed felt that they couldn't stay home from work because of the nature of the office politics within the office. They felt it was too risky. This situation indicates some unhealthy work environments as well.
3. 15 percent of employees surveyed felt that they had too much going on at work to be able to stay home. They did not want to fall behind.
4. 12 percent of employees surveyed stated they needed to save up their sick leave for childcare, care of an elderly family member or other emergencies at home.
5. 8 percent of employees surveyed stated they saved up their sick leave for use as extra vacation time.

Another reason, not identified in this particular study, employees feel that they cannot afford to take time off (if sick leave is unpaid). They cannot afford to lose the income from being out of work for those few days.

A few things that can be done to help prevent sickness within the office include:

• Keep bathrooms and break room areas clean. More germs are found in bathrooms and break room areas than throughout most of the rest of buildings. Make sure you have these areas cleaned regularly and provide a full stocking of anti-bacterial soaps, towels or air blow dryers.


• Provide hand sanitizing stations throughout various parts of the building.


• Provide cleaning materials for individuals to be able to wipe down their personal equipment. If employees wipe down keyboards, telephones, desks, etc with some type of anti-bacterial wipe they can avoid re-infecting themselves or others. This should be done regularly, at least once per week. Or if you know you are feeling like an illness is coming on, do it more frequently.

As a business you want to try to encourage your employees to stay home from work when they are sick. By allowing them to stay home and rest your preserve the productivity of the employee that is ill as well as the productivity of the other employees around him / her. It is extremely distracting to be around someone that is constantly coughing, blowing their nose or running consistently to the restroom.

What can you do legally? Well, as long as your employees don't have any kind of union contract or contract verbiage stating that you cannot send them home when ill, send them home. Whether you offer paid or un-paid sick leave, if an employee is sick enough to need to be home in bed, ask them to go home to rest.This isn't just for niceness sake; this preserves the health and safety of your other employees. This is also part of your legal responsibility.