If you have a high temperature or are recovering from a surgery, it is difficult to be fully focused at work. Sick days are meant to prevent people from hurting themselves, their co-workers, or customers on the job. However, working from home has changed this logic.
The work-from-home revolution has raised the bar for what counts as being sick. At the height of the pandemic, people worked from home even with some serious symptoms such as fever, shortness of breath or sickness. Many still have to.
Nicholas Bloom of Stanford University has been tracking work-from-home habits since before the Covid-19 popularized them. In a recent working paper, he presents the results of a randomized controlled trial at a large multinational company, where sick days fell by 12% for employees working from home compared to those coming in full time.
To be in bed not doing anything means discomfort both physically and mentally. Salaried workers, who are often evaluated on the basis of their attendance, find it hard to call in sick for a few days now that they don't need to worry about spreading germs in the office. For high-achievers, putting in the hours is not a chore but a way of life. As the economic recession(萧条) puts future job security into question, showing yourself to be useful becomes even more important.
Though all this is understandable, it is also troubling. Being even mildly sick can impair brain function. It is difficult to exercise proper judgment if one cannot focus on the task at hand. It is why people with lower oxygen concentration sometimes remove protective clothes atop Mount Everest some freeze to death. Firing off emails while feeling dizzy will put the body under further stress.
Soldiering on (硬挺) may make the employee both sicker and less productive for longer. Digital presenteeism (超时工作),for that is what such persisting amounts to, is in no one's interest.
