Will Covid-19 change how we think about sickness absence?
To continue reading please register or login to your OHW+ account. Altering perceptions of sickness and disease  Whichever way we look at it, the Covid-19 pandemic has reshaped many of our working practices, maybe forever. Along with employers embracing home working and realising that it may benefit productivity and performance, employees are realising that it is, at best, a mixed blessing. Giving up the commute on crowded trains or buses, is a definite benefit.However, trying to work in cramped, un-ergonomic home offices can be a struggle, particularly if there are two of you trying to work and the children are not at school. One form of work stressor has been replaced by another.It is not just working practices that are altering, but our perception of sickness and disease. When I qualified in medicine in the mid-1970s, it was not remotely unusual for people to take a week off sick with a cold. I remember that when I was at school, I only had to mention a sore throat to my mother to be sent to bed for the day. Since then, levels of sickness absence have fallen. In 2002 the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development reported that average sickness absence in their member organisations averaged around 10 days a year . Most recently, i n 2019, it reported this had fallen to just under six days annually. Well, my view is that we became blas about minor illnesses such as colds and mild flu because they rarely have long-term consequences and usually get better within a few days. If we think back to the 1940s and 1950s, however, life was vastly different. There were no immunisations apart from for s