Prepare now for ‘the big sick’
Employers should prepare now for high rates of staff sickness that could kick in as soon as Omicron breaches the border and last until spring or beyond, Otago University professor Michael Baker warns.
‘‘If and when Omicron gets here, it is going to really add to the burden of absenteeism this year,’’ Baker said.
‘‘Also, if the borders are open, we would be expecting a more severe flu season and the other respiratory infections that dominate in winter.’’
BusinessNZ chief executive Kirk Hope expected good access to rapid antigen tests would be key to helping companies manage the likely fallout.
Baker said that assuming the Government stuck to its current timetable of opening the border with Australia to a large degree in March, the country could expect the rapid spread of Omicron and ‘‘very high levels of absenteeism for several months’’.
That was despite Omicron generally seeming to be a milder illness than other Covid variants, he said.
‘‘Then we may move into winter with more respiratory viruses, so I would say it would be prudent for businesses to plan for a large amount of staff absenteeism from as soon as we get Omicron until spring and perhaps even to late in the year. We could see many months of disruption.’’
Baker stopped short of suggesting it might make sense to attempt to stagger the arrival of Omicron and the opening of the border.
‘‘It is one thing having a plan and another being able to implement it effectively – and also the relevant viruses getting the same memo.
‘‘The best outcome will be delaying this while we get as many New Zealanders ‘boosted’ and as many kids vaccinated as possible,’’ he said.
All businesses that had customerfacing roles or staff that met face-toface should have vaccine mandates and should extend them to include boosters, he believed. ‘‘It may also be a requirement to have a rapid antigen test at the start of the week, or during the week, depending on how critical some roles are.’’
Businesses might consider dividing staff who performed critical functions into two teams and trying to keep them separated if they wanted to maintain business continuity, he said.
Sickness and self-isolation caused by the rapid spread of Omicron has begun playing havoc in Europe, the United States and Australia in recent weeks.
Australian media have reported that high rates of illness among truck drivers have contributed to empty shelves at Australia supermarkets.
Britain’s Centre for Economics and Business Research said on Monday that a ‘‘conservative’’ estimate of 8 per cent absenteeism in January and February could knock £10.2 billion (NZ$20b), or 2.6 per cent off the country’s GDP over the period.
There is some evidence to suggest sick leave fell both in New Zealand and internationally during the earlier stages of the Covid pandemic.
An obvious explanation is that the positive impact that maskwearing and other Covid restrictions had in restricting respiratory diseases more generally may have outweighed the extra sick leave because of Covid itself and a new intolerance among co-workers for turning up to work with a sniffle.
Data compiled by Southern Cross Health Insurance and released by BusinessNZ last year suggested that employees took an average of 4.2 days of sick leave. That was the lowest level of sick leave since the survey began in 2012.
Hope said the survey covered some data from the pandemic period, up to June 2020.
But Hope agreed New Zealand employers could expect to see a rise in people needing to use sick leave and other forms of leave this year.
‘‘There’s no doubt from what we understand about Omicron that it will start to have an impact on the availability of the workforce.’’
Rapid antigen tests could help by at least giving employers a pretty good indication of whether workers that had potentially been exposed to
Covid would need to self-isolate, he said.
But much clearer guidance from the Government about who would need to isolate would also be really important, he said.
Labour shortages meant there was not much slack for businesses to handle staff absences, Hope said.
Employment lawyer Barbara Buckett of BuckettLaw said sick leave tended to be ‘‘a hot potato’’ in employment relationships.
She said it might be difficult for employers to require staff to take sick leave, but suggested it might not be unreasonable for them to require staff who had Covid-like symptoms to take a Covid test or visit a doctor. ‘‘You will find that some employers determine people to be malingerers, and we get the perennial ‘some people take a regular pattern of Fridays and Mondays off’.’’
The prospect of a wave of noncritical illnesses sweeping the country would appear to raise the prospect that employers might be tempted to ask staff who were only a bit sick to perform some urgent tasks, especially if they were able to do so from home.
But Buckett indicated that would be unreasonable. Businesses usually had the option in employment contracts of asking staff for a medical certificate to prove they were too sick to work, making that the backstop, she said. ‘‘If I’m unwell, then I am unwell and I can’t work.’’