Pity the snowflakes. As if being struck down by illness wasn’t bad enough – including record high levels of flu that could lead to 8,000 hospitalisations this week – they’re being lambasted for office-dodging for wanting to keep their germs at home.
Life shouldn’t stop on account of a sniffle, obviously. But it remains bizarre that, with a global pandemic in recent memory and seasonal viruses wreaking havoc, coming into the workplace while streaming from numerous parts of your face is considered something to aim for.
This mentality has inevitably helped to create the “tidal wave” of flu now hitting the UK so hard that the chief executive of NHS Providers (which represents NHS trusts) has advised that those with symptoms wear masks in public. Extreme, perhaps, but with a much-mutated strain of H3N2 flu striking far earlier in the year than usual and proving more capable of evading the flu vaccine, preventative steps are clearly required.
Daniel Elkeles, chief executive of NHS Providers, said this week that “we were all really good about infection control during Covid. And we really, really need to get back to that now.” His comparison exposes what has become a twofold problem.
First, the Covid-era hangover now rife within many organisations: that working from home is akin to not working. It is this ethos that has led to stricter in-office policies around the world; Instagram, for example, is introducing a no working from home mandate from early next year.
And second, as even 30 seconds spent on the Tube now demonstrates, people appear to have entirely dispensed with taking simple precautions against super-spreading. The cough-and-sneeze orchestra occurring within each carriage practically rivals the screech of the grinding rails; a hand reaching towards a mouth is a rarity, let alone covering it with a mask.
The last thing I want is another mask mandate, let alone to return to the bleakness of what Covid took from us: the years of distance, the social damage, the needless loss. But on our full-to-bursting NHS wards, the failure of the promises made during that time – to fundamentally alter our attitudes towards illness, and prioritise hygiene – are writ large. Had we made those changes and employed a bit of common sense, the current “tidal wave” could have just been a splash.
That so few lessons have been learned, and that the old, ineffectual ways of doing things – particularly when it comes to sickness – have returned in full force, is somewhere between stupid and dangerous. It should be obvious, but for those confused: coming into a packed office to splutter violently isn’t proof of your allegiance to the national oath to keep calm and carry on, but is putting numerous other people pointlessly in the line of fire.
This proves only that you care more about saving face in front of higher-ups, rather than protecting your colleagues and their children, elderly relatives and packed schedules from needless risk. It makes the pandemic’s main message – that we should take action to protect the greater good, rather than prioritising ourselves – feel like a relic of a bygone age.
Why, then, does the idea that it is laudable to come to work while sick persist? Yes, germs are good for us (to a degree), but don’t be fooled into thinking that’s why companies insist on bums on seats. Along with trying to claw back in-office time they feel they were “cheated” out of by employees during Covid, there is a generational divide at play.
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Younger employees are more likely to want to work from home than their older peers (a Times survey published earlier this year showed that only one in 10 staff members aged 27 and under wanted to be in the office full time); by this logic, they are more likely to choose to be at home – working or otherwise – if symptomatically ill.
For senior staff, however, this is simply proof of their snowflakery; that GFH (germ-ing from home) isn’t about infection control, but rather staying in and having a company-funded day off. I’m sure that for a minority of skivers that might be true, but believing that productivity increases when you force very sick people into the workplace is laughable. Allowing people a day or two to recover before they return to the office at full pelt is clearly going to yield better results than having them struggle for days at half-capacity and infecting colleagues (who then themselves become less able to do their jobs).
The issue remains that conversations about productivity have instead been swallowed by presenteeism; where being seen is apparently more valuable than doing your job well. Getting past that would do far more for businesses – and the country’s sick rate – than this continued insistence on being in, no matter your state. Until that changes, this record-breaking “flumageddon” is only a sign of things to come.
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