🤒 Sick in bed with your laptop 🧑💻 on your lap? Working through fever and flu? Working from home when sick? Should you, or should you not? 📅 Today, February 11 is World Day of the Sick. It feels like a good moment to talk about something uncomfortable about remote work.
Should you work when sick?
One real risk of working remotely is that people keep working even when they’re sick.
Because:
- “I’m at home anyway”
- “I’m not infecting anyone”
- “It’s just a cold”
- “I’ll just join the call, camera off”
But being sick is still being sick. Whether you’re in an office… or sitting at your kitchen table in pyjamas.
If you’re sick, don’t work!
🧠 At Nozbe, we’ve been very clear about this for years: if you’re sick — don’t work.
But because:
- working with a sick body also exhausts your mind
- it usually slows down recovery instead of speeding things up
- it creates a dangerous habit: treating health as secondary
And that always comes back. Sooner or later.
💡 How do we handle it in practice?
- if needed — online doctor consultations
- if you don’t want to see a doctor — just rest
- work can be made up another day: in the evening, over the weekend, or later in the week
-
and sometimes… it doesn’t need to be made up at all
- The world won’t collapse.
- The project will wait.
- Your health might not.
🥶 Of course, if you’ve got just a little cold and you do want some work done, you can.
But remember:
🌱 Remote work is not about being “always available.” It’s about having more responsibility for yourself.
👉 How does it work in your team — can people truly take time off when they’re sick?
#NoOffice #RemoteWork #FutureOfWork #Leadership #Health