Sick Days Becoming Few And Far Between With Remote Work
Sick days are becoming few and far between with the prevalence of remote work, and online school. The covid-19 pandemic changed a lot of things in our world. But one is now the majority of jobs have an option to work from home. This can impact the idea of “sick days”. Previously if you called out of work sick that meant laying in bed, probably having some soup, and watching tv. You may answer the phone or respond to a couple of emails on your phone, but you weren’t really “working”. These days things have changed. Even if you aren’t feeling up to being in the office or are worred you might be contagious most people are continuing to work. The team at Skynova surveyed over 1,000 employees who started working from home during the pandemic to get their perspective on taking sick days while working remotely.Notable findings from Skynova include:
- 4 in 10 people have not taken a sick day since they began remote work
- 31% of people say they’ve taken an unofficial sick day (a sick day without telling their boss)
- 62% of people in work environments whose time off policy got more strict talked themselves out of a workday, versus only 42% of people in work environments where the time-off policy didn’t change
- One-third of people worry their supervisors will be suspicious of them for taking time off during remote work, and 27% of people worry their supervisors will look at them judgmentally
When you’re working in-person, during cold and flu season employees have to take a sick day if they’re feeling ill. However, 33% of remote employees reported worrying their supervisor will be suspicious of time off requests especially during remote work.
View the full study here
