Yes, Go To Work Sick

This is a tough issue, and

It is always a good idea to demonstrate personal accountability, working through adversity is a great way to do that.

I believe that if you are a danger to yourself or others safety or health your boss will tell you to go home and recover, or, seek the advise of a medical professional.

Here in the US, the last thing we need is another acceptable excuse to not go to work.

To Mike and Mark: Happy holidays and keep up the great work!

Do the right thing...

The right thing, is to get immunized against the diseases that you may be legitimately immunized. (Standard flu, H1N1).

If you are showing flu-like symptoms, you should not go to work. If you are communicable, that is not excusable.

I do enjoy the podcasts. Thanks! Happy Holidays! 

Sigh.

I agree with SJAdam1--

If you work with the public*, prevention is the way to go!
Hand washing and immunizations all the way.

There are a variety of medical/sciency mistakes in this podcast--typhus is not the same as typhoid, for example.  I tried to sit on my hands and not nitpick (pun intended).

-------------------

*Especially children--germ-ridden little devils--er, darlings!

This is not the whole story...

Mark, Mike, I love your work and I deeply respect your experience, but you may not be painting the whole picture this time. Working while sick may go well beyond making one miserable - it can be outright dangerous.

Piece of anecdotal evidence: several years ago I did just what you recommend. I worked all the way through a common cold. Nothing out of the ordinary, moderately elevated temperature, OTC treatment. The cold would not go away, so after a week or so I went to a doctor, annoyed. Where I literally collapsed and could not walk, and was carted to a hospital bed. I spent the next week semi-conscious, under drip. Heavy pneumonia. It took me over a month to return to work.

The point is, I was not of poor health at that time. Actually, I was at peak life condition, very fit, race swimming, practising martial arts. Later I learned such cases are uncommon, but familiar to GPs, sometimes leading to very serious medical conditions, especially in young ambitious patients. I cannot cite any statistics, admittedly.

I just started with a new

I just started with a new company a few months ago became sick with what I later found out to be bronchitis and went to work to demonstrate that I was "hardcore". Instead of being heralded as a trooper I got the "stink-eye" all day from my colleagues. The corporate culture here is if you're sick stay home and I believe understanding that also should factor in a decision to go to work sick or not.

Oh my! Of all the people

Oh my!

Of all the people I didn't expect you two to take efficiency over effectiveness.

Yes, if you are non-knowledge worker if you are sick you can theoretically work at 50% productivity during flue which is way better then 0%

But would you buy a hamburger from someone coughing all around fast-food bar?

Would you place vegetables you buy for your kids on a counter in a supermarket in front of a worker with spots all over his face?

Would you trust car-breaks put together buy someone more concerned with the banging in his head rather then your safety?

And it gets worse if you consider knowledge workers.

"Air control, is this an airstrip or a higway? I have 40 deg. C and I'm not sure anymore"

But even coming back to a simple world of shuffling papers: medical conditions and even the simplest drugs like aspirine change the way you think. You will not only make simple mistakes (like sending wrong budget numbers to the tax office that will cost your company millions in fines) but you will also make irreversable wrong decisions.

In the world of knowledge workers it is much more effective to take a couple of days off and return with full creativity and attention.

One of my programmers had a saying that you're effectively unable to type more then 10 lines of meaningful code every day because then your brain will be tired and you will make bugs and any excess lines will have to be deleted the next day anyway.

(Disclaimer to the last point: fortunately thanks to modern rapid application development technologies this is no longer true. It may be like 20 lines nowadays :-) )

Working Mother

I see the pros and cons to the go-to-work sick argument and tend to side with the go-to-work camp.  In fact, I'm much more likely to show up or, at most, take a half day.

Part of that is because I do feel that I need to support obligations I have made rather than slowing everyone down because I need to take a day off.  Part of it is selfish, though.  We have PTO (vacation & sick days lumped into paid time off) and I would rather save those days for planned events...

... or (and this is where I have a question) the unforeseen sick child days.

As a working mother of a 3 yr old and a 1 yr old (germ-ridden little darlings is right), I face a couple of years of sick children affecting my work performance.  I try to telecommute as much as possible (calling into meetings etc) but find that I can only put in about a half-day while tending to the child.  And, of course, they are always ill at the most inopportune times (days when I would probably just come to work if I was the one under the weather).

While this probably only affects a minority of your listeners, perhaps you could provide some advice/suggestions for any other ways I can balance work/life while being sensitive to work obligations.

Advice for the manager?

I'd love to hear the manager tools counterpart of this cast: How do you react as a manager

1. if a direct calls in sick who's apparently not
2. if a direct shows up who's apparently seriously ill

Do you have a show like that coming up?

Knew this one would generate some discussion!

I am a public health nursing director, so I think that you may assume where I come down on this. Your assumption would probably be wrong.

I see wisdom in the way that the M's have presented this topic WITH the caveats intact. As a student of communicable disease ... viruses will spread. That is why immunization is the greatest technique for prevention, and is woefully underutilized in our country and corporate culture. In my opinion you cannot beat the evidence through research that immunization will pay dividends in productivity for your company.

What I heard is "err on the side of working", depending on where you work! In the case of high fever or GI symptoms of course not. Wash your hands and be respectful. Yes...always. You are going to be contagious BEFORE the illness begins showing symptoms, so practice good hygiene at all times, before you are sick. I'm not buying a hamburger from a cougher whether the cough is from smokes or a virus. Yuck.

Of course there are exceptions, and I think that these have been addressed. I don't think that the podcast encourages reckless behavior. If you work in a profession that requires more discretion about illness then use your professional judgement.

I am also sympathetic to parents that have to use their sick days for children off school and day care. That is something beyond their control.

Janet

On a related note.. yet the same

Years ago, the president of our company told me that after a bad snowstorm had snarled the roads, he would make judgements on employees based on who had made it to work. I've done the same. It's amazing that those who can't make it to the office when ill also have problems getting to work when there's a snowstorm. And those who brave the elements also show up when under the weather. 

Walt

on a note similar to MFPRYSL's above...

In my last two workplaces - financial software dev - the attitude was "when sick, get outta here; we can handle several days of your absence, that's why we have procedures, safety margins in schedules and you have successor-designees; what we may not be able to handle is when you misplace a sign in a formula and the customers lose money". Once I heard explicitly that the company needed top performers, not bodycount. For the record, these were  Fortune 200-level multinationals, not niche shops.

In the company I work for, a

In the company I work for, a media company, errors on service delivery cost us money in the form of service credits. We'd rather someone stayed off if they're less than 100% as the overtime needed to cover their sick shift will cost us less than an error.

Of course, the person sick may not make an error - thereby incurring no cost - whereas the overtime shift will definitely cost us money. However, one error would cost us more than the cost of the overtime shift plus the lost "sick" shift.

We also have many roles to which this sort of service credit cost doesn't apply. So it's a balance.

Jeremy

1. Thank you 2. Argumentation 3. Topics for the future

1. First of all, thank you Mark and Mike for this podcast and especially for the interview series. I have implemented a lot of the stuff in my daily work and it showed great results (e.g. the company giving me an award for outstanding performance; my wife successfully interviewing for a very attractive job). I love the energy of your cast and I do not mind the repetition –as I am often listening while commuting or jogging.

2. I like as well that you are openly discussing about the argumentation (i.e. the bit about reductio ad absurdum). This shows excellence, awareness and professionalism. Two remarks concerning Mark’s argumentation: First, it seems that both sides of the arguments do not have any numbers/studies. The examples (e.g. the retired physician saying: I was almost never ill) are purely inductive. I have the opposite experience – I worked during a flue and was hit with high fever and really had to stay in bad for two days (and… that does not prove anything either). Second, the argument “all things being equal”:This can as well be used to make the opposite point: If everyone was equally fit and a group would sit next to people that are sick and another group would not, the likelihood (yes, I hear you: how likely?) that a member of the first group would get sick is higher.  Connected to this is a minor point that people are different and it is not always the individual that may influence his/her fitness. Some people have to care for their sick children who cry all night. Some people are – without their fault less fit then others and will get flues more easily. E.g. around 8% of the population in the US has asthma of different degrees. At the end of the cast you seem to acknowledge this – the middle part sounds different.
 
3. Some parts of this cast were really interesting because they showed significant differences in the value system between Europe and US. I – being a Northern European find the idea offensive that people only have a number of “personal days” which includes sick days. As well the touching on the health care system was interesting: Health care in the US is much more expensive than in other industrialized countries and the results (infant mortality, physicians per 1000 people etc) are worse. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_compared#Cross-country_comparisons   Still people in the US usually believe that their system is the best. Please do not get me wrong here: My point is that there are very different views on this topic. I would be very grateful to have Mike and Mark dive into topics like “cross-cultural communication” and especially business in Europe compared to US.

Jochen

Tough Topic

Props to M&M for covering such a hard topic

Any decision like this is going to be values based descision i.e. very little can be labeled "right" or "wrong" by either side

I'm just happy that they didn't let the idea of potentially failing (in a few people's eyes) keep them from providing a lot of value to the bulk of people out there

Its the difference between seeking success and avoiding failure, and one of the big reasons I love Manager Tools!

QD

PS - I am still making up my mind on this specific situation. I always used to default to work, then in Sept. I gave my two bosses H1N1 (It felt like a minor cold to me). One was out for 2 days, the other out for 5 days, both with fevers.

Now everytime I sneeze or cough people freak out. Having felt like the Masque of the Red Death for a couple of months, I now reconsider a bit more when I'm not feeling well...

The good news is that now my bosses ENCOURAGE me to take sick days lol

QD some comfort for you

Assuming that your bosses do not live a monastic life, we have been in the midst of a widespread pandemic, which makes it very possible that if you felt you had a minor cold you probably did, and your bosses got their H1N1 from the thousands of other people in your community that had it. Flu is body aches, chills and fever, severe respiratory symptoms. Even mild flu makes you sick, sick, sick.

Knew this would be contentious

My only comment is about telecommuting. 

As someone who is in meetings or people's offices at least half the day, I don't really find it an effective substitute.

But other folks at my company have fallen in love with working from home - so much so, I'm not even sure if sometimes they are ill or they just didn't feel like showing up and would rather put a conference call on mute.  I've had bad experiences where people pretend to be in an hour long conference call but hit the un-mute button by accident and they seem to be doing something totally different.

terrible podcast

I understand your perspective but wow it is not a good advice at all.  With the ability to telecommute pervasive and increasing there is no reason to have to go into the office when you are sick.  Take care of your people first, allow them to heal and get better and you will have better overall performance the whole year.    This podcast is worried about missing a few days of work.  A properly led team can deal with someone being out.  Is this perspective based on organizations that rely on individual performance and poor teamwork?

Also, these are airborne diseases in many cases.  Not everyone is going to be able to prevent germs from reaching other coworkers.  

Not sure I buy the economic argument for all cases

You briefly mention the concept of PTO, where the employee gets a lump of time which is used for both sick and vacation time. As a project manager, if a sick employee comes in and works at 50% productivity, I am paying a premium out of my project budget to get the work done, versus using their PTO time, which I have already payed for out of overhead. Most employees use all of their PTO every year, so that PTO time taken as sick time just results in a shorter vacations taken later in the year. Note that in my case, employees do directly bill their time to projects (or to specific overhead accounts), and we are all paid hourly, not a salary.

I also have the case where the owners of our small business are germ-phobes and don't really want to see sick people in the office, so our corporate culture is also biased against visibly ill people dragging themselves in.

.

.