A Plea to Take the Common Cold More Seriously: Stay Home and Don't Spread it Around

According to Sandy Smith, in a 2002 article entitled The Common Cold and Productivity Loss, published at www.occupationalhazards.com, each case of the common cold experienced by an employee causes an average of 8.7 lost work hours, most of which is time the employee is spending at work, miserable and unproductive. And a good deal of productivity loss, according to Smith, is also due to the time time workers must take to take care of their children who have colds.

Most workplaces, however, are intolerant of people taking sick time for a mere cold. Or, the sick time policies are so stringent that workers view sick days as wasted if they are used for a cold. The result is that people go about their daily business: at banks, at schools, in restaurants and supermarkets-- handling food, filling prescriptions, traveling on airplanes and in innumerable ways of serving the public-- while sneezing, coughing, and spreading the common cold far and wide.

I remember visiting a friend who worked in a corporate office building. During his first year with the company, he got more colds than he had had in his adult life. One only had to walk through the building during January to see and hear why. Workers were coughing, sneezing and hacking while sharing telephones, computer keyboards and mice, while eating together in the cafeteria, siting in small meeting rooms and sharing elevators.

This company's sick day policy allowed only two sick incidents a year. Incidents could include five continuous days off for an extended illness. If a worker took one day or two days off, that was considered the complete incident and the rest of the sick days for that incident were forfeited. Most workers, worried that a more serious illness or other health situation, or that of their children, could later occur, were not going to waste their sick day incident on a bout with the common cold. Thus, they came to work sick and spread it to every one else. And, as Smith' s article points out, simply showing up to work when ill does not equate with productivity.

Employers need to place the desire for the short-term appearance of productivity with the long term benefits of a having healthy workforce.

Perhaps, one day the cold will be a little less common.