Gen Z is actually taking sick days, unlike their older coworkers. It’s redefining the workplace
Paywall removed: https://archive.is/rRQ5W
https://fortune.com/2024/08/28/gen-z-sick-day-generations-workplace-culture-covid-pandemic/Open linkView original on lemmy.world595
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It's not even that.
In an office setting sick days literally help productivity, because metrics and workload should account for employee's work hours.
If someone's on leave for a day, theyre taken out of production numbers.
If they "tough it out" then production numbers say they should produce a normal days workload.
You end up looking worse encouraging a work culture where people don't take days off.
Yeah that doesn't work for kitchen staff.
Count your blessings. I've been sick enough to mute my work call while vomiting. (They needed me that day, and mostly I just needed to be on that call.)
But I've absolutely had days where I couldn't get far out of bed.
Ha! Good one
I got a bad cold or something one time. I spent 2 weeks working from home then the boss told me to go to a doctor. Went and they found nothing so I had to come in. 1.5 weeks later I was over it but not before the rest of the office got pissed at me for getting them sick. I just told them I was forced to come in.
That's the problem with Gen Z: they don't want to SHARE
It’s not so much the argument it’s workplace policies that say 6 or more days a year means you can be fired with cause. A late clock-in counts as half of one of those.
At least that’s been standard at most places I’ve worked.
Brutal. There is a world beyond the American dystopia, you know.
And I've learned it doesn't want us unless we wanna be nomads or we really have something amazing to offer.
(Maybe I'm setting the bar too high looking into Scandanavia lol)
You need a new career, yikes
2020 taught people nothing.
I worked really hard at my first year at a big company and didn't take any sick days. During my performance review, I scored 4/5 for attendance, even though I arrived early for every shift and did every overtime opportunity. When I asked my manager, she said it's policy not to hand out 5's because it sends the message that there's no room for improvement.
No one could tell me how I could improve my attendance.
Absolutely rage inducing. Care to name and shame the big company?
I will, Raytheon has this policy. Also, fuck Raytheon!
Naw, it wasn't a bad experience overall, once I fell into the habit of mixing sick days with vacation days.
They had some exploitable policies, doctors notes for 3+ sick days in a row but no questions asked about 1-2 days, vacation days with 2 weeks notice one day at a time with no right of refusal if there's proper coverage.
This meant you could book Wednesday to Friday off two weeks in a row, and call in sick Monday/Tuesday two weeks in a row, giving you 10 days off for the cost of 4 sick/ 6 vacay. Other exploitable shenanigans were possible around Stat holidays.
The front line managers knew what the situation was, but HR never got wind unless something tripped the system,so if everyone works together on their sick days it was pretty good.
Okay well then you don't have to shame it; just name it.
I'm 50. I've never had 10 days off in a row. I tried to plan two weeks last year and left but had to come back early.
Yea fuck that, take the PTO, don't let anyone tell you to come back early.
Wow, I'm sorry. Please, consider moving away from the USA before you work yourself to death
Yo, heard. Reminds me of something familiar on my end as well. Nice when there's a lil bit of wiggle room in a system like that. Gotta have a functional team though that can appreciate that work hard play hard work-life balance thing.
Relatively recently got a decentish gig after only working "good bad jobs." While the corporate culture shock is still abrasive at times, nice having some actual benefits and shit -- other than being able to call in "sick" to fuck off or hang with the boyes without care or consequence. Have a decent stack of mandatory personal/sick days that renew annually.
I can already tell I'm gonna be getting mighty ill around the holiday season, something definitely brewing.
This is pretty typical and not related to one specific company.
Always max out at 4/5 effort, so there's always room to grow.
The reason is it makes the managers look good. They aren't judhes on their productivity scores directly, but on how their scores are from last year/quarter. So they intentionally sabotage employees to make themselves look better.
Whenever I'm asked to give feedback on somebody when dealing with support, I always give full marks to the staff member, even if they couldn't help much.
It's not their fault the company they work for is a load of shite.
what the fuck
Covid taught me that a nurse’s education is wholly inadequate. I also think they may be becoming irrelevant with so many specialized techs.
One of the early jobs in my career was providing help desk tech support specifically to a group of nearby hospitals. Prior to that, I thought that - as you said - many or most medical professionals had an above average general intelligence by default. This job killed that theory.
The most prominent example I can recall is that of spending seventeen minutes on the phone trying to explain where to find a semicolon on the keyboard. Not what a semicolon is or how to use it or its function, just what it looked like and where it was on the keyboard. For seventeen minutes. At the end I think we gave up and found another approach. Obviously - again, as you said - their knowledge is specialized and I couldn't do their job, but this and many other examples seemed pretty egregious.
That said, I've had a decent number of medical emergencies in my life and, while I've found a few doctors and nurses to be personally offensive, they've always seemed to do their job very competently and I've always, always appreciated them being there. Hopefully that demonstrates that the above example was an outlier.
There's stupid people everywhere. The idea is that we can't fool proof everything but we can promote change in attitude. There are no infallible people. I've met them all, engineers, doctors, politicians, millionaires, everyone has the potential for being utterly stupid at topics they aren't even aware they are ignorant about.
Is this something I'm too European to understand?
Yes. American work culture is bonkers. Most places have a limited number of sick days, if they have health PTO at all. In my experience, if they offer it it's usually 2 weeks worth, as if people are capable of controlling how often and how long they're sick for.
Before the Rona times, people would legit flex on how dedicated they were to their jobs that they didn’t see their families as much. That’s not a joke. The work culture in the states has been absolutely toxic for ages. I’m fucking stoked it’s changing.
I’m just not allowed to get sick. Simple!
I get 10 days a year on a sliding window. So if I call in sick in June, I won't get that day back until June. It's bullshit.
I saw a documentary where a German millionnaire was bragging about going to work with 43° flu to make you believe that he worked very hard to get rich.
Only reason to do that is to pass the bug to those who set the bad policy.
I love how this comic was underneath for me
https://lemmy.ml/post/19672635
From my experience, it is everyone, regardless of age. COVID changed things.
I've started wearing a mask if I'm feeling sick, which was unthinkable before 2020.
I just stay home when I'm sick unless I have to go out. And then I wear a mask.
I just stay home as much as possible
For some people perhaps. I sadly still go to an office occasionally and I'm astonished that there are people clearly unwell coughing and sneezing all over the place. Last time I went I came back with Covid and was out for nearly a week.
My ex-coworker used to come in obviously sick. "Yeah I've got all the NyQuil symptoms." He would then proceed to cough all over the shared workspace for 4 hours, inevitably coming to the conclusion that he needed to go home. Not coincidentally, this was also about the time that volume picked up and the real work started.
He also got mad at me once when I didn't congratulate him for cutting back on smoking after he spent two+ weeks in the hospital for COPD.
Thankfully we no longer work together anymore. I quit and he died in his 50s.
I really wish companies would realize workers are more productive when they can take time to take care of their mental and physical health.
Stressed out, overwhelmed, and exhausted people naturally make more mistakes, and mistakes cost money. You'd think they'd understand this because...well... profits?
But no, a bunch of sociopaths Machiavellianed their way to the top of companies and seem to enjoy making their workers miserable while claiming profits are the motivation for horrible sick leave policies.
The US is fucking awful about this shit. I really hope it changes soon.
This is why unions are actually helpful to businesses in the long run. Workers see problems that management doesn't, and then are empowered to make changes.
The behavior of business owners makes more sense if you think of the goal as power rather than money. Money is often a path to power, but there's sometimes conflicts between the two. Watch which one they pick and you'll see what they actually value.
"It won't."
source: scroll of truth, probably.
heaves scroll across the room
Companies don't even realize that sick people shouldn't be serving food. I wouldn't hold my breath (unless you're eating at a restaurant, where there's a 50% chance an employee is working while sick).
I read something yesterday that really disturbed me: there are actually people that worship sociopaths and their manipulative, selfish demeanor as the only true elite. Its disgusting. I feel like this needs to come to the attention of the masses.
Got a link to more info?
In fact I do. This is what was linked: https://thepowermoves.com/the-gervais-principle-summary-review/
I wish we would start excluding these folks from positions of power. Its not healthy for anyone.
Still so crazy to me how there are limited "sick days" in the US. You shouldnt need to take limited days off when you are sick. If you are sick you are sick.
Damn you people in the default country are insane.
I only know the world where everyone takes paid sick days. And usually it's more like a week.
Maybe you should rename the community into "Work Reform USA"?
“Default Country” is my new favorite way to describe the US.
It definitely applies to reddit/lemmy. But also often to YouTube content etc.
If we're lucky enough to get vacation days, many of us are encouraged to only take 2 adjacent days to the weekend off. Month long vacations like Europe? Never. 4 days off in a row, normal.
So, should you fight for a work reform, or should you figure out why even your more left leaning party when in power does jack shit about it, and whether it's really a democracy problem, or a national culture problem, or if maybe your solution is to move to a different democracy where the majority is aligned more with your core beliefs.
Or maybe I should daily start posting about working conditions in lithium mines in Africa and call for a work reform? Ah, that won't get upvotes.
Heck, I'm a millenial and I take mental break days when I'm feeling too overwhelmed.
Good. Mental health is health.
I've had to do that. Some days I just can't deal with driving all over the state and dealing with customers
And that is the law in MN. Last year they passed a sick and wellness law that requires sick time and the law stipulates how it can be used. Mental health is one of the options.
My former boss always said, if you're sick, take a day more off. Would be a problem if half the company got sick.
It's in europe tho. Has it swapt over finally?
Hahaha you had us U.S kids in the first half, not gonna lie. :D
The newer trend with fancier jobs here is "unlimited paid time off"...Which sounds so amazing!
How it actually shakes out is there's no actual number of how much you can take, you're just guilted and looked at suspiciously and passed over for promotions by using any amount whatsoever.
I'm sure someone can correct me though because I've never had that. My last job gave me a rate of "A week's shift's worth of PTO per year."....I worked 19 hours a week.
(Also PTO isn't "sick" days, it's paid time off...sick and "I'm just not putiup with it today" used up the same resource.)
Company has no loyalty at all to the employee. I could let go every day that I go to work. It's not a question of if, but when I will be let go. So, as a consequence, I must ask myself the question: After quitting the game, will I regret sacrificing my health for yet another company?
Older coworker here (Xennial). I've always used all of my sick days. One job had a week you could carry over to the next year. I held that week if I didn't need it because next year I'd be making more money. Next job started with sick bank but stripped it away and lumped everything into one PTO bucket that they weren't legally bound to offer carryover from. Oddly enough, they started having trouble with attendance in November and December as people just took days off whenever. Oh well.
A long time ago at a startup, we had a generous vacation time that had no carry over limit. Most of us didn't take the full PTO allotment. The morons that the VC people wanted to change the policy to have carry over limits.
I'd send an email about this time every year to ask if they were going to limit carry over. Because I need to know when in October I have stop working for the year. Most of the founders had similar PTO accrued.
After about 3 years, they finally did it. I had to take 3 separate 4 week vacations in order to finish the year at my max carry over.
My father did similar his last year. He basically worked two days a week and took three days vacation for an entire year or so.
Older Millennial here and because I hang out at websites that Zoomers do, I've also started doing this. Y'all have had a major influence on the way I see life, the universe, and everything. I try to keep my sick, PTO, and UPT hours as close to 0 as I can. I call off several times a month and I've come into work late every single day for almost a year straight now.
If you're going to give me the time, I'm going to use it. Only thing I save up is vacation hours for a yearly trip to wherever.
In your boat and managed university students. Even millennials are dinosaurs and we all just need to get out of the way.
That part is questionable, but if you're just working 10a - 6p, it's fine. If you're making another person cover for you until 9:02, it's absolutely not fine.
8-5 with unpaid lunch is normal here. 830-45 is "late" even if you work til 530-45. Just my experience
The company has a backup plan for this (they offer extra shifts to cover tardiness/absences and someone always picks them up), not to mention that we're overstaffed almost every single day; bottom line is that I'm not worried about it. It's the company's responsibility to have enough staff on-hand, not mine.
Every single day it seems like there's an article describing how thing is redefining the workplace.
We're only about 15 years into the online revolution. I say 15 years cause it was about 2010-12 that "normies" (the general population) all got online and got Facebook and Twitter accounts. Historically, these kinds of revolutions take a generation or two to pan out so we're only in the beginning of redefining life through the lens of the general population being constantly online.
All these "disruptions" to the workplace and to social engagement will be seen as the writing on the wall retroactively compared to whatever paradigm shift we're going to see about it in the next 10-20 years.
Between the younger generation and COVID redefining the acceptability of coming to work sick, the workplace does look a lot better.
Every company I have worked for has explicitly encouraged using sick days. Specifically so the person doesn’t bring whatever bug into the office and sharing it around, causing multiple people to get sick and take time off
Are you in the US?
I am indeed, but I’ve had the good fortune of having reasonable bosses. It’s also possible that we were told “use your sick days” insincerely
I'm a manager and it infuriates me when I hear someone bragging about not talking sick days and coming in when they aren't feeling well. Even before the pandemic that seemed pretty stupid and I argued against it. How anyone still thinks it's a good idea is beyond me. If you want or need to work, fine, do it from home. Don't come in and make other people have to deal with being sick.
It's especially stupid where I am because sick time is discretionary by manager, and there's no cap. So it's not like anyone is going to run out of it.
I feel like religion/conservatism plays a role in this mindset. There's a lot of pride in self-sacrifice and at least appearing "strong" in the face of adversity even if it's regarding your health. Not that I agree with it at all. I'm all for unlimited such days and self-care.
Maybe religion, but also stupid views about "manliness" - it's never the women saying it. To stay home sick is too be weak and it's more masculine to keep working even though you've got a raging fever or whatever. It's dumb.
How does it work in the US? Do you have a limited amount of sick days? It sounds like it in every article I read about it... Or is this dependent on the employer?
Also dependent on the state. Some states mandate minimum sick leave, others don't. Then there's the issue of paid vs unpaid: if you're living paycheck to paycheck it doesn't matter if you have all the unpaid sick leave in the world, you're not going to use it because you literally can't afford to.
You don't get any federally?! Damn, I don't want to complain too much as a Canadian but you guys are really bringing us down.
Many of us get none at all. I haven’t had a sick day for the past five years.
It’s not something to be proud of. It’s exploitation.
I'm really sorry. Please try and share this idea with others. Surely this is something the voting public could get behind if they knew how bad they really had it.
Edit: I understand the nature of your political structure makes this difficult.
At least half the voting public will vote for whoever their news station of choice tells them to vote for. And all of those news stations are owned by billionaires.
I'm generally not surprised by this kind of thing anymore but I still wonder: how??
27 hours 4 days a week? What a workload.
I see, thank you.
Totally employer dependent. Some places give you sick days and want you to use them if needed, some give you them and will absolutely throw you out if you use them, some don't give you any, some people want you to use your PTO for sick time.
That definitely sounds like something the Best Country In The World (tm) should have laws on.
Ben Franklin said, "If you sacrifice liberty for security, you deserve neither," or something like that, and America heard, "Any kind of security for any reason is communism!"
Absolutely...
Horrible...
My employer gives unlimited sick time but if you use too much you might have to talk to hr about taking a leave of absence if its something long term. If I am not feeling good I "call in" (i.e. send an email :•| ). We also have PTO but being salaried I get paid the same for sick days anyways. If i need a mental health day I just call in and use PTO only for vacation days like they should be used
All about the employer.
It varies greatly. There's also the "lump sum payout" people consider at some jobs.
Some places don't cap how much sick leave you can carry over year to year, and then when you leave they pay it at a reduced rate. So especially coming up on retirement, some people dont take it to increase that payout. Others do the opposite and use all they can at the end because then it's full pay.
Like most things in America it's overly complicated and everyone's job handles it differently
dependent by employer
Thanks for the info!
I don't get paid sick time I can use my PTO. Would I rather be sick and miserable at work(in which my day already sucks)and be paid and using my rest and relaxation time for something I want or do I use one of my 10 PTO days and cancel my vacation I may have already booked since I only have 10 days off a year 2-3 days I have to use for federal holidays since I don't get paid off since I am contracted with the bank but my company doesn't pay me for the holiday.
I get this, but it's horrible incentives. The company will lose money from other employees getting sick, and you're sure as hell not as productive when sick even if you go to work. I don't understand why the US work culture has developed in such a way that's bad for everyone.
My vacation days are capped, but my sick days are not. I'll take my sick days when I retire.