The end of sick days: has WFH made it harder to take time off?

Zoom calls, email and Slack channels have facilitated work during lockdowns and made it easy for employees to stay at home if they had Covid, but they have also made it harder to take sick days. Elizabeth Rimmer, chief executive of LawCare, a charity that supports good mental health in the legal community, has joined numerous webinars and virtual meetings in recent weeks attended by people struggling on with Covid. “They didn’t look good. [People] can lie in bed with their laptop and power through even if they are unwell.” Jane van Zyl, chief executive of Working Families, an advocacy group, says: “We have to be mindful that the lesson from the pandemic is flexible working and not working round the clock.”