Working While Sick

You've heard it dozens of times before... Your employer and coworkers say that if you are sick, you should stay home. They don't want your funk! They don't want to be grossed out by seeing or hearing what you are dealing with, and they certainly don't want to catch it, so they want you as far away as possible.

Why do you still go to work when you're in these rough conditions? You need that paycheck! You also don't want to burn through your paid time off (PTO) being sick because you want those days for vacation. And you may have meetings and deadlines that you'd miss and set forth a chain reaction that would take days and weeks to recover from. Doesn't that make you feel important?

Despite all of your valid reasons, your office mates are still right. You shouldn't be in the office. And this is yet another reason that working from home is the cure for what ails you.

When you work from home, no one is there to catch your germs. No one has to listen to the sounds you make (coughing, sneezing, blowing your nose, or worse...) You are containing your germs to you!

There are creature comforts of working from home as well. If you need to sleep in a little longer, no one will notice if you didn't get dressed, fix your hair, put on makeup, or skip your morning workout. If you are having a fever or cold chills, you are able to adjust the thermostat appropriately and dress to match, including sporting that awesome Snuggie you try to deny you have. If you need to take medication throughout the day, you aren't raising any eyebrows. And you truly cannot articulate the value of having your own, private restroom. Even your lunch time becomes more valuable as you can catch a quick nap, run to the doctor, refill a prescription, fix a bowl of soup, or otherwise help yourself get well.

Here's the best part: You're able to do all of this AND work. BOOM!

All of this assumes that you have some cognitive ability to add value, of course. There are some illnesses that you can work through, and some you shouldn't. Sometimes 50% of you at work is better than 0%, but in other cases you should just focus on a complete mend so that you can come back to work strong sooner. Check out my prior blog about allowing yourself to actually call in sick.

In a time where HR measures corporate wellness by the number of "unhealthy days", companies are trying to maximize productivity, and employees are using their vacation time to actually take vacation, being able to NOT take a sick day has increasing value. And that drives up the already valuable nature of working at home.

The real reason for working at home

Most people are familiar with the typical reasons people and employers have work working at home: saves commute time, less money on cloths and dry cleaning, less office real estate needed, environmental impact, etc. And these are all great reasons to get started. However, if you dig a little deeper, you will find that most folks have a deeper, more personal reason for working at home.

It’s important for people at-home to recognize this, so that they understand why protecting this privilege is so important to them. It’s probably even more important that people in-office are exposed to this, for each time they belittle the at-home experience, they are hurting so much more.

I personally became an at-home worker through a number of office circumstances. However, today’s primary reason for its importance is my older dog. Gidget is now 16.25 years old. And yes, we count months at this point! She has health problems, is mostly blind, and somewhat senile. She doesn’t remember where she is, she gets lost, and she panics. That is, when mommy isn’t around! Mommy has become her ability to keep calm. She doesn’t impact my work; she sleeps all day in the corner of my office. I don’t notice she is there, but she would absolutely notice if I wasn’t. On rare days when I have to go to the office, mass hysteria ensues, and I come home to a freaked out little baby and a giant mess (in more ways than one!) My husband and I are both convinced that if I wasn’t working at home, she wouldn’t still be with us. The ability to work at home has extended our time with our little girl and I am eternally grateful.

I have friends that have equally honorable reasons for being at home, if not more so. I have a colleague whose family was having such a hard time with local allergies and asthma that it was almost killing them. Their family moved out west to the dry air to be healthy. If they couldn’t work from home, they wouldn’t still be with our company. I know other folks that are at home to ensure their kids get to and from school safely. There are some that work at home because our company literally has no offices in their location, and if we want to keep their skills, it’s the only option. I know people that moved to be close to family. Another person works at home to take care of their ill husband, ensure he gets his medicine, respond to any emergencies, and more easily take him to the doctor. Others do the same for ailing parents. Some are at home because their commute is hours. A few have medical conditions that make an in-office job impractical or impossible.

As you can see, there is more to being work-at-home than meets the eye. When you provide proper resources and engagement to these individuals, you are not just impacting their work deliverables, but also the health and well-being of their entire family. Before asking someone to “just come in tomorrow” like it is no big deal, consider that it just might be, and then consider if working differently will help reach the same goal without disrupting their world.