“in my experience 90% of sickness is b*****t and if they all came in when they should, the working day would be easier and so benifit all the staff short term and long term. but as we know staff can only see as far as their noses. always the way isnt it lets blame the company and not the staff going sick.
rant over.”
So, Jingo, what is your experience? It’s pretty easy to toss in figures like “90% of sickness is b*****t”.
Without any figures and just anecdotally I think BA’s sickness problem is worse than many places. Partly that’s due to the vagaries of the job. Shift work, particularly at night and often having to work outside in all weather can make a difference whether you go in to work when not feeling well. I know I’d be happier if I was a passenger knowing an engineer for instance was concentrating on his work rather than his cold/flu/diarrhoea. Who wants flight crew in charge of an aircraft and feeling ill or out of sorts. Shift work has been proved in many studies to have an adverse effect on the body’s rhythm causing tiredness and worse.
Of course there are always those who take advantage too, especially as already mentioned when moral is low. I don’t know what the situation is like there now but I seem to remember the staff have to sign in on a computer which was programmed to highlight when you had more than “x” (no. of sickness occasions) whereupon the manager would question the person.