A sickie? No, 90% of us will soldier on if ill

NINE out of ten workers prefer to get up and go to their jobs rather than stay at home if they feel ill, a five-year study said yesterday.

And in further evidence that the days of ‘pulling a sickie’ are vanishing fast, it reported that four out of ten workers took no time off ill at all last year.

The diminishing likelihood that people will go sick from work, charted in surveys conducted for the Canada Life insurance group, underlines official assessments that say such absences have been falling steadily over the past 25 years, particularly in private industry, small businesses and among young people.

The report, based on a survey of 1,000 workers, said 89 per cent have gone to work when they are ill. In 2018, it said, 42 per cent of workers took no time at all off work sick.

But working while unwell, sometimes called presenteeism, brought its own problems, the study found.

Paul Avis of Canada Life said: ‘Presenteeism is counterproductive as it signifies employees do not believe illness is taken seriously in their organisation, which has a negative impact in the long run in terms of staff retention and productivity.’

Office for National Statistics figures show that between 1993 and 2017 the number of sick days fell from 178.3million to 131.2million a year. A typical worker took off 7.2 days in 1993 and 4.1 days in 2017.