I’ve been sick for a month. Ever since I vomited on New Year’s Eve. This wasn’t your normal ring-in-the-new-year ten-shots-of-tequila vomiting, though: this was hardcore “I am mostly sober – why is this happening to me?”-type vomiting. It was the first major sign that something wasn’t right.

So I tried to ignore the fact that my body was rebelling against me for a number of days afterwards, but that ended up being futile. I went to the doctor and the doctor said ‘pneumonia’. And that has been my story for January 2009.

Pneumonia.

I’ve had worse things happen to me, medically-speaking. But this was definitely the most frustrating. Just when I’d start to feel better, the symptoms would come rushing back. It’s an illness that will actually trick you by playing dead, only to wait until your back is turned and then it strikes. Again and again and again.

Through the fevers and the coughing and the general aches all over, I missed a number of days of work this month. And that got me thinking: if my workplace weren’t so wonderful that it allowed me the flexibility to take the time I need to get better, what the hell would I do? From the people I’ve talked to, it seems that the majority of HR policies out there these days dictate some sort of fixed number of sick days per year. For most people, it’s a number between five and ten. These are, apparently, separate from vacation days. (And sometimes there are also ‘personal’ days – which makes me wonder what happens if you get sick while on vacation and THEN something personal comes up.)

There are a lot of HR policies in effect in a lot of businesses today that I find ridiculous, but this whole limiting sick days thing is near the top of the crazily-insane list. It’s akin to trying to set a limit on the number of snow days employees are allowed per year¹ or how many times the office server is allowed to crash in any given week. You can’t count things that are beyond anyone’s control.

The bottom line is this: when you’re sick you’re sick. There is nothing an HR policy can do about that.

Limiting employee sick days sends two very dangerous messages. The first is actually a message employees subtly hear all the time from HR policies. It’s the we don’t actually trust you kind of message. It comes from a place where employees will always – always – lie to their superiors for their own benefit. And that if you give your employees some sort of “carte blanche” to take as many sick days as they want, they’re bound to just take HUNDREDS of them.

The ironic part about this is, of course, that employees are way more likely to lie to their superiors if they’re put in an environment where everyone expects them to lie. It’s self-fulfilling.

The second message this sort of policy sends is more dangerous. It’s one that calls on employees to be TOUGH. Seriously, it says, so you got a little cold? A little sore throat? Your temperature a widdle bit above a hundred? Boo Hoo! MAN UP. We got work to do!

People often think this at an almost visceral, subconscious level. I think it dates back to hostile gym classes in elementary school when the person who couldn’t do a chin-up was destined to failure in life and love.

The problem here — and I know the logical part of everyone’s brain KNOWS this — is that sicknesses tend to be CONTAGIOUS. And so the “TOUGH IT OUT” attitude tends to lead to whole offices of people passing sicknesses around-and-around like some sort of demon carousel for months on end until finally the summer hits and people start going on vacation.

So what’s the upside of limited sick-day policies? That it keeps people from faking sick to go hang out with their buds all day? I doubt it. In fact, it probably encourages exactly that behaviour as people get close to the end of the calendar year and realize they’ve got some sick days they need to burn.

I will add my standard disclaimer that, yes, there are positions that are entirely about physical presence and in those positions, someone being out sick for more than a couple of days at a time can be devastating to overall productivity and output. I don’t really think an HR policy is going to help in these situations, either, though — if you’ve got an essential-presence staff member who’s got a serious illness, you’ve got to deal with that REGARDLESS of your policy.

But, still, I understand some people like these policies and find them useful. I respect that. Because, after all, studies have shown that 40% of sick days are taken on Mondays & Fridays, which tends to point to not everyone being honest about being sick…

Right?

Photo by thegirlsmoma. Licensed under Creative Commons

1. This probably only makes sense if you in live in Canada or the Northern US. Snow days are days when there is so much snow that it becomes dangerous to drive in to work. [↩]

Tags: human resources, policy, sick days