Why Your Best Employees Are Terrified to Take a Sick Day Right Now

A shaky job market and the rise of AI are driving an uncomfortable workplace trend: workers are slogging through illness just to prove they’re indispensable.

BY KIT EATON @KITEATON

Illustration: Inc; Photo: Adobe Stock

Few people must really like working when they’re sick—coping with typical workplace duties is just an unwanted burden when you’re feeling unwell. Thus taking time off when you’re sick is known to be excellent advice: for workers it gives time to recover quickly in comfortable settings, and for employers it means you get your staff back sooner, they’re not in the office sharing potentially infectious illnesses and so on. But for some people, working in certain company cultures, taking sick leave can be a problem. A new study looked into what forces ill people to slog away at their work duties when they’re not feeling well, and highlighted economic and job uncertainties as the leading factors. The results may prompt you to reconsider how you manage illnesses among your workforce. 

Economics researchers, being careful to exclude workplace data skewed by the covid pandemic, looked at how thousands of workers either did or did not take sick leave over an 11........

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