8.6 Million Workers Applied for Sick Leaves Die to ‘Painful’ Work Culture, claims Research
New Delhi: A new survey by Kantar, a London-based research, data and insight consultancy, has shockingly revealed the dark of office and professional culture with respect to sick leaves employees take.
According to the survey, that took place over a week in January this year with a sample size of 1,250 working adults, found that about 8.6 million people called in sick in 2019 because they found their jobs “too painful”, as per BBC report published on the same. The survey aimed at drawing a picture of a wider working population upto 33 million people.
Based on the survey, an IT company Insight has also studied employees and found that 12 million workers took sick leave for genuine reasons. The research, was released on a ‘National Sickie Day’. It also said that work culture concerns, colleagues and workloads were responsible for this.
“Employers have a duty of care to their employees to look after their safety and wellbeing, and this includes their physical and mental health,” said Tom Neil, Acas Senior Adviser, according to the BBC report.
“For people to be able to be honest about how they feel at work, good work practices including having an inclusive culture and effective people management are key.”
According to the result of the survey, a quarter of respondents said they had taken a sick day in the last year because of dissatisfaction with their jobs, while some other employees felt overworked or that poor systems and processes made it hard to get work done. Others blamed conflicts with workmates.
Monday Blues
According to the research, some of the most comment reasons given were Stomach trouble (24%), Cold cough and flu (16%) and Headache (7%). It also revealed interestingly that Monday emerged as the chosen day of all top 10 days for absence last year with 16 September topping the list. According to some surveys, more employees call in sick on the first Monday of February than any other day of the year, with an estimated 215,000 doing so last year.
Sick but no leave
Other results of the research also introduced a significant 37% respondents who said they had come into work in the past year despite feeling sick since they could not afford unpaid sick leave or did not want to use up a paid sick day. Others said they did not want to feel judged by their employer or co-workers.
Work From Home?
An estimated 6.5 million or 1/5th of the respondents revealed that despite being sick, they would be happy to work from home but their firms wouldn’t allow it.
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