our in-office employees are upset that they have to use more sick days than our remote workers

by Alison Green on October 16, 2024

A reader writes:

I’m the staff liaison to the board for updating the HR policies at a nonprofit where we’re transitioning to independence from our fiscal sponsor. We’re a small, mission-driven team, and while some roles could technically be remote, we all truly prefer to work on-site due to the collaborative nature of our work and wanting to be with our served community as much as possible. We serve a high volume of in-person clients, and everyone wears multiple hats to get things done. No one has ever expressed any dissatisfaction with this! However, it has created challenges with our sick day policy.

We have two groups of employees, both of which are salaried-exempt:
• Group A: Employes whose specific job duties must be done on-site and no part can be performed remotely.
• Group B: Employees who work on-site but could do most of their specific job duties remotely when necessary.

The issue arises when an employee is sick but still capable of working. Group A employees must take sick leave, as they can’t work remotely, while Group B often has the flexibility to work from home, allowing them to preserve their sick time.

This situation creates a sense of unfairness for Group A, who must use their sick days, while Group B becomes frustrated if they are forced to use sick days when they could be working.

Group B gets frustrated because there is a necessary disparity in the way in which responsibilities are handled during absences. Group A’s tasks are critical front-facing roles serving clients in need in the moment, but they are not highly technical. When one of them is out, someone must step in to serve the client and can easily do so. However, Group B’s tasks are much more technical and require skills others don’t have, so the work can’t be done when they are out. Group B steps in to do Group A’s work when they are out sick, but no one can do Group B’s work when they are out, so it piles up and that frustrates them, since they could have chosen to work remotely instead of using sick time.

Additionally, Group A expresses concerns about the potential for abuse of the work-from-home policy. While the team maintains a close-knit and trusting environment, instances of turnover can disrupt this balance. Previous employees have sometimes struggled with productivity while working remotely, leading to worries that similar issues could arise again and exacerbate tensions between the two groups.

Compounding the problem, our current policy allows unused sick time to be paid out at 80% upon leaving the organization, resulting in higher payouts for Group B. Group A worries about the strain this puts on the organization and feels it’s unfair that Group B receives a larger payout, while Group B argues that since everyone is still paid during sick leave, Group A is not losing out financially and that the organization needs to budget properly for pay-outs on this policy either way.

Here’s an example. I am Group B and recently tore my meniscus and was strictly instructed to stay in bed. Even though I was fully capable of working on my laptop, I took three sick days, to avoid upsetting Group A during these tense policy discussions. But this left important tasks that require technical skills that others can’t easily perform to go undone. Usually, I have a backup to handle these tasks during my planned absences, but my backup was on vacation. Despite being on sick leave, I still received messages asking for urgent help because my absence created strain on the team. I was bored out of my mind watching TV shows while resting my knee, so I was happy to help where I could. I ended up logging 3-4 hours of remote work each day on just those tasks. I would have preferred to work full remote days to get some of my own work done too, because I was capable and I knew my unique technical tasks were piling up. But I was asked to keep that as sick time and not work, to be considerate of the tension we currently have around this policy.

We’re trying to create a fair and equitable policy that balances both sides, and I’m struggling to find a solution! Any insights, resources, or suggestions you have would be appreciated!

It is inequitable, and you have to navigate that without ignoring the reality that some jobs can be done from home and some can’t.

I don’t blame Group A for being upset that some of their coworkers end up with far more accrued sick leave that gets paid out when they leave the organization. You’re essentially paying a departure bonus to employees in Group B, and that’s not fair. I understand how you got there — but Group A isn’t wrong to be upset about it.

Would you consider offering additional sick days to people who can’t work from home, in recognition of the fact that they necessarily end up needing more sick leave because of that?

Also, people won’t like this, but I might also rethink the policy of paying out sick days when people leave. It makes sense to pay out unused vacation days, but paying out sick days is less common and creates an incentive for people to come to work sick (thus exposing other people to whatever they have). Sick days are supposed to be a safety net for when you can’t work, not something you hoard for later payout.

Alternately, you could consider moving to unlimited sick time (not unlimited vacation, because of all the issues that come with that, but unlimited sick time). Unlimited sick leave isn’t uncommon anymore, and that would help solve this too.

But otherwise recognize the higher burden on your in-office workers by giving them additional sick time. It would go a long way toward easing some of this resentment.

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  1. Dawn*

    I was going to say, why don’t you just give Group A more sick days?

    This really isn’t a particularly complicated solution.

    1. Dawn*

      I think also I’d probably say, if you want to work, then work. You shouldn’t be held responsible to take time off that you don’t want to take off just to manage your colleagues’ feelings about it. They’re adults, I assume, they can handle their own emotions.

      1. Trout 'Waver*

        100% agree with this. I can’t imagine taking sick leave simply to mollify other people. Obviously, staying home to protect other people from contagious disease is very important, but not working from home when one is able and prefers to do so seems misguided.

        1. JustaTech*

          And yet it is instruction that I have received from management (who is intensely anti-WFH but won’t fully ban it). “If you’re sick take a sick day!” OK, but what if they’re not so sick/injured that they can’t work, and don’t have very many sick days left? Why would management want *less* work to get done?

          1. stratospherica*

            Hah, yeah. My company, which is “hybrid” (in that it’s the least amount of WFH you can offer and still call yourself hybrid) told us that if we’re sick, we take the day off instead of working from home. We don’t get sick leave because it’s not common in our country, and we get anywhere from 10-20 days paid leave a year, depending on tenure, and if we can’t take paid leave then we have to take an unpaid day.

            Naturally, that means that sick people come in and get the rest of us sick, and then we come in sick, and get other people sick. Our job can be done fully remotely – our top performer in the department is still very infrequent with how often she’s in the office.

            1. Dawn*

              “our top performer in the department is still very infrequent with how often she’s in the office.”

              I would be too if people kept coming into the office sick.

    2. Lucy P*

      I thought the same thing.

      I also don’t like the idea of paying out sick time. It’s almost like encouraging people not to take off when they’re not well.

      1. Spencer Hastings*

        Yeah, it’s incentivizing Group A to physically come in while sick, and Group B to WFH while sick.

      2. Pizza Rat*

        I’ve never heard of this before now. I’ve had a company I work for let you buy vacation time with your accrued sick time (you needed a lot), but not this.

        1. Elizabeth West*

          I haven’t either, nor have I been able to buy time. But TechExJob* let people go in the hole for 40 hours on PTO, in case you needed extra. Then you had to earn it back before you started accruing again. They also had a policy pre-COVID not to come into the office if you had a fever. Nearly everyone except the receptionists could work from home, and there were enough people to cover them that they could stay home if needed.

          *at this point I’ve had so many exjobs with AAM examples I feel like I need to be more specific, lol

      3. doreen*

        Really, any benefit for unused sick time encourages people not to use it, whether it’s paying it out in a lump sum or giving extra pension for unused sick leave. I had a government job where we earned a lot of leave each year and could bank loads of it. People took three weeks of vacation to recover from surgery because unused sick leave was more valuable at retirement than unused vacation.

        1. mbs001*

          The problem is that sick leave is an insurance policy — it’s not meant for people to use up every last drop. But some people will abuse that and use up all sick leave regardless of whether they are truly sick or not.

          1. Medium Sized Manager*

            We recently switched to sick being in the same bucket as vacation instead of different, and one person was upset because “what if they needed the sick time.” They had 200+ accrued hours and barely took sick time, so I wish I would have thought about your insurance example. I ended up pointing out that, in order to need that volume of time, they would end up qualifying for short or long-term disability anyway!

            (Not to say it is a good or bad policy, just that their reason for being upset was off-base).

            1. Kit Kendrick*

              I had very mixed feelings when my company rolled sick time into general paid time off. On the one hand, they dropped the number from 10 to 5, but on the other hand I rarely took more than 5 sick days in a year anyway so in theory I was coming out ahead. In practice, of course, what this did was punish people with chronic illness and people with children and encouraged people to come into the office while still contagious rather than lose vacation time.

              1. Luce*

                I’m very rarely ill, and can WFH easily, and I’m also not a fan of sick leave being rolled into holiday leave for the same reason – it’s still punishing people for being ill by costing them holiday time.

                Also, I think it feeds into the idea that people who are sick are taking time off for a jolly – instead of necessary recovery. And that can also lead to resentment for people who are ill (as if they’re just being selfish and bunking off work!) instead of sympathy.

          2. carrot cake*

            Yes, some people do abuse, although for me, that’s tough to figure, as I periodically remind my staff of six they are welcome to take sick leave if they just need to get off the merry-go-round for a day or two, i.e. mental health days. I mean, “sick” can be defined as beyond a cold or post-surgical recovery, etc.

            Works well for us. \O/

        2. MigraineMonth*

          I have a government job with a byzantine system for how sick leave does/does not get paid out: if you work there for at least 5 years and retire from the job, sick leave is paid out, but into a restricted account that can only be used for health expenses.

          Since that’s too complicated for me to deal with, I’ve decided to just use the time off for when I’m sick.

          1. Aeryn Sun*

            I have a government job and it’s the same thing for me, with the added wrinkle that you need to have accumulated at least 60 sick days for it to be in effect. I like my workplace and I currently have over 24 days of sick leave accumulated so I’ll probably get there eventually, but it’s not stopping me from taking sick time when I need it.

            1. MigraineMonth*

              My job put vacation in a different bucket than sick leave (good!) and then got carried away and created at least six other PTO categories, all with their own maximums, rollovers and expirations. We even have a separate bucket for vacation time accrued this calendar year, so it doesn’t get mixed up with previously-accrued vacation time.

          2. Sparkle Llama*

            My government employer has a policy to allow sick leave over 8 weeks accrued to be used for purchasing gym memberships, fitness equipment etc. this over course has an extensive government policy about what is fitness vs recreation but still leaves something up in the air. A stress management program is eligible, so can I use it to pay for therapy for my diagnosed anxiety disorder? Who knows! But we know that cross country skis are fitness and down hill and water skis are recreational.

            1. Dawn*

              This is the problem with hyper-specific policy, there’s always, ALWAYS something that someone didn’t think of

          3. NurseThis*

            It’s been a huge help for me in retirement…my old unused sick leave is paying for a Medicare supplement policy and pharmacy provider. Also my spouse and I were able to combine our sick leave balances together.

            1. Dawn*

              I’m sure it has been, but the point is that everyone should get that same benefit, whether or not they’re lucky enough to be healthy enough for it throughout their career.

              Like so many things in our society, this is just another example of punishing caregivers and people with chronic illnesses.

        3. Orv*

          If I wanted to take sick time for surgery, my employer wanted me to fill out a bunch of paperwork so they could run down my FMLA balance at the same time, and get a return-to-work authorization. My surgeon was unwilling to do all the paperwork, and the whole thing was extremely invasive for something I didn’t really want to be come workplace gossip, so I ended up taking vacation time.

          1. Learn ALL the things*

            Requiring staff to use FMLA when they’re out for surgery is extremely common, and it’s one of the things FMLA is for. I am side-eyeing your doctor EXTREMELY hard for not being willing to fill out the paperwork for FMLA and for a return to work release, because nearly every person they operate on will need those things, that’s how standard this practice is. Most surgical practices have someone on staff whose entire job is filling out FMLA paperwork.

            1. Orv*

              It was voluntary cosmetic surgery, so FMLA didn’t really apply, and the demand came very late and was extremely detailed. I had asked out of curiosity if sick time was available and that was what triggered all the demands.

              Frankly I didn’t want my workplace knowing the details of what kind of surgery I was getting or prying into why. It was a big fight because they started trying to insist on prying into it even though I was using vacation time.

              What I learned from this was to never, ever disclose why I’m taking time off.

      4. RedinSC*

        When I worked at the university they allowed the accumulated sick time to count towards your years of service. So if you were rarely sick and had like 300 days banked, that got you basically another year of service. Which has a value, but wasn’t cash in pocket out the door.

      5. Dawn*

        I mentioned this in another thread, but I’ve known other workplaces where they paid out sick time (or put all time into one bucket, which was paid out) and the first point you mention is exactly what ended up happening: people would come into work viciously ill and infect others just for the sake of picking up an extra hundred bucks at the end of the year.

      6. iglwif*

        Yeah. It’s the same basic concept as a really amazingly terrible phenomenon I recently learned about: perfect attendance awards at school. It’s incentivizing behaviour you really don’t want, and likely also leading to greater overall use of sick days, since (unlike OP’s current situation) many of the reasons people need sick time are extremely contagious in an office environment.

        1. Kuleta*

          OT, but at my school the perfect attendance award was considered an embarrassment. Just a certificate, no prize or anything involved.

          So if someone was on track for it, they would deliberately come into homeroom late just once to mess up their record and not get the award.

          1. iglwif*

            Ha!

            My school had nothing of the sort (possibly it’s an American thing?) but I can imagine that as a plausible reaction, for sure.

        2. Thegreatprevaricator*

          I hate these and they are pretty cemented in UK state schools. Partly a legacy of concerns over attendance which is proven to affect child’s learning. But it’s such a blunt instrument. Not only does it incentivise coming in sick, but it penalises children with disabilities and chronic conditions because they will never achieve 100% attendance. Schools have to do it, because it’s one of the things that Ofsted look at. Similarly they have to fine parents with children who have absences over a certain amount. God forbid they look at the absolute state of provision for children with additional needs and how that interacts with school refusal…

          1. Thegreatprevaricator*

            Too add, kids with perfect attendance get treats as well as a certificate. All kids get a chiding letter at the end of the year. I hate it all

          2. Minimal Pear*

            Yeah I am chronically ill and have been since I was a teen and boy did the high school admin people have some Feelings about how often I was out.

          3. MigraineMonth*

            I was visiting my sister’s house, and apparently their school district decided to address the issue of attendance by sending every student’s home a large magnet with “YOUR CHILD IS IN DANGER” in bold red in Spanish and English. The smaller text explains that the danger is to your child’s academic success and chances of graduating from high school *if* your child misses more than the specified number of days of school for any reason.

        3. Annie E. Mouse*

          Perfect attendance awards are the reason a couple of kids in my elementary school came to school with chicken pox and infected the second and third grades. This was in the 80s before a vaccine and chicken pox parties still existed, but it still disrupted the whole term when half the class was out for some amount of time over a 2-3 week period.

        4. LingNerd*

          That just reminded me of the end-of-year awards ceremony in middle school. In 8th grade there was a person who got a special acknowledgement for having perfect attendance all 3 years. I did not get a similar acknowledgement for getting a 4.0 all three years. My mom was not pleased with the school about that! I was 14 and wasn’t terribly bothered because I didn’t feel like I’d worked hard for it (probably an ADHD thing – school was interesting, so I did not perceive my own effort)

          I’m pretty sure the girl who got that perfect attendance award burned out hard after high school. Which was, in retrospect, not that surprising. Taking breaks and taking care of yourself is really important

        5. A(DHD) Student*

          I put myself on a perfect attendance track during high school after being tired of missing a week at a time of elementary and middle school every time I had a cold. There were a lot of benefits in the “90% of success is just showing up” category (or whatever the figure in the quote actually is…), but when I attended my reunion, I met people who were wildly successful who had hated school and attended as little as possible! Whereas I had powered through weeks at a time of bronchitis every year and only missed a few days of flu so bad I was convulsing (Fall ’65?). It was a socially successful time, a creatively successful time (music), I learned a lot and paid attention in class, but academic achievement? motivation to excel? Really not so much.

        6. NurseThis*

          On that note, “# of days since a work related accident” signs don’t work well. Employees feel pressured to not report accidents and once someone does, the dam breaks and there is a huge uptick of incident reports.

        7. Media Monkey*

          my friend’s daughter refused a perfect attendance award at school. her brother has leukemia and is obviously a long way from perfect attendance – she didn’t see why she should get an award for not being seriously ill. how can a 7 year old see what many adults can’t?

      7. Aeryn Sun*

        It’s a really weird incentive. If everyone has enough sick leave for what they need then I’d be inclined to be say it’s not really a problem, but paying out that time exacerbates the issue. I feel like a lot of places have some people that need to be in person every day and some people have more flexibility, that’s pretty common, but this is financially worse for the people who need to come in every day.

        It’s really hard to take away a perk, but I wonder if it’d make sense to be like alright, we’re phasing out paying out sick leave, but here’s a bonus/extra vacation/additional perk to ease it in.

      8. Nonym*

        It seems unfair, if not discriminatory. I enjoy the privilege of good health through sheer luck; I don’t deserve to be rewarded for it monetarily. People who experience more health issues receiving less when they leave feels punishing, for something they have no control over me.

        It also creates a counter-productive incentive for working through illness, which isn’t great for anyone.

        I would eliminate the pay out – replacing it with some other advantage everyone can partake in, so you aren’t just taking a perk away. This would likely resolve or mostly resolve the issue, since the ability to work from home while sick would now both be an advantage and a disadvantage.

        1. Nonym*

          To explain it better: you have created a system which rewards working through sickness, and as a result, the ability to work while sick is seen as a coveted unfair advantage.

          Remove the inappropriate incentive and the ability to work while sick will cease to be an advantage to fight over.

        2. Lab Rat*

          I once worked with someone who was incensed that she couldnt get paid out for her sick days because she didn’t take any.

          She said “I don’t take sick days, what do I get? All of these people taking sick days get all this time off and I have nothjng”

          And I said “You’re healthy. You have your health.”

          Btw I was a persom who took a lot of sick days for chronic health reasons.

          Then she squawked like a bird.

      9. Clisby*

        I was curious about this – I’m in the US (now retired, but I worked 40 years before retiring) and have *never* had a workplace that paid out sick leave when someone left. Is it common in the US?

        I have worked at places that let you carry over limited sick leave per year – this is how 6 weeks of my maternity leave was paid – but I’ve never gotten money for it when I left a job. PTO, yes – that was always paid out at the jobs I’ve had.

        1. doreen*

          I’ve known a few people who got it paid out – but it was a yearly payout and something like five days a year that didn’t roll-over.

          1. Heffalump*

            My current employer used to have a yearly payout at 50%. Then, several years, they instituted a single bucket for sick leave and PTO.

        2. jay*

          My work pays out any accrued sick time over 80 hours each quarter. I’ve never worked anywhere else that did anything like that. It’s a nice little bonus on top of our performance bonuses, but I think they’re going to get rid of it (they stopped offering it as a benefit if you were hired after a certain date).

      10. Elizabeth the Ginger*

        Or even if people do stay home when they’re sick, it’s rewarding healthier people for something that’s mostly out of their control. “Hey, I know it sucks that you have whatever genetic quirk that means you get debilitating migraines, but on the other hand, you also get less money!” Ugh. It’s the same reason I’m opposed to “perfect attendance” prizes for schoolchildren.

      12. Katara's side braids*

        I wonder if it’s combined sick/PTO that LW is just referring to as “sick time” because that’s the usage most relevant to the letter? If so, it’s a great example of how combined PTO buckets can end up causing more problems than they solve. Unlimited sick time with a set number of PTO days (as Alison suggested) makes more sense to me.

        And before the sandwich brigade announces themselves: I know there are many industries where unlimited sick time isn’t feasible. Hopefully LW will tell us whether or not that’s the case for her industry, but the sense I get is that staffing for the coverage-based jobs isn’t quite as tight as it is in retail/food service etc.

    3. Nonym*

      The problem with this option (just giving Group A more sick days) is that Group B would be receiving less sick days than their co-workers and would likely be disgruntled to have to cover for Group A *and* have to work through their own illnesses with no reward or incentive. This seems unfair in the circumstances, considering both groups are in-office workers.

      That’s why replacing the unused sick leave payout altogether by a perk everyone can equally or equitably enjoy is preferable.

  2. Trout 'Waver*

    I think the concern over fairness is vastly overblown. Different jobs have different requirements. I work a job that can’t be done remotely in a company where most everyone else can work remotely. It’s the nature of the work I do.

    1. Dust Bunny*

      Nobody is taking issue with that (and I say that as someone whose job cannot be done remotely) but this is a situation where there is a very simple solution to a problem that is putting a specific group of workers at a disadvantage. There is no reason not to implement it.

      1. Trout 'Waver*

        “Group B gets frustrated because there is a necessary disparity in the way in which responsibilities are handled during absences.”

        There’s a situation where Group B covers for Group A’s absences but Group A can’t cover for Group B’s. So yeah, according to the LW, Group B is taking issue with the different requirements.

        Also, I wouldn’t call any change to compensation or sick time a “very simple solution”. People feel very strongly about such things and rightly so. Any change has the potential to create winners and losers because people have vastly different preferences and needs.

        1. Spencer Hastings*

          It’s hard to think of a change that creates winners and losers *more* than the status quo already does.

      2. rebelwithmouseyhair*

        Yeah we’ve seen instances of remote workers being left out of pizza parties and so on, and Alison has said, well, that’s just the way it is, you can always go in if you want pizza. Now that it’s the WFH who have a perk, she’s suggesting getting rid of it.

        Nothing is fair of course. When I worked in the Paris branch of a company with its head office in another city, I was often left out of everything. The others at the Paris office worked for a different company within the same group, and they had their own perks, but I didn’t get to have any of the perks of the staff at head office either. And when they offered WFH they wouldn’t entertain anyone working anything but office hours as at head office, even though it didn’t matter in the slightest when you got your work done provided it was handed in on time. My colleague wanted to start just half an hour earlier and finish just half an hour earlier, but 4.30 was apparently too early to stop working. (I had previously worked until 4.00 and negotiated to work until 5.30 then take Friday off instead, and the boss didn’t want that, so the whole thing was just BS.

    2. HonorBox*

      I think you’re not giving the LW credit for knowing what’s happening in their own business. They highlight several ways in which there are concerns about fairness. Different jobs have different requirements, which highlights why there is a concern. One group is using far more than the other group by the nature of their positions.

      1. Glen*

        We all care quite a bit about fairness – it’s part of what makes us human. This letter provides a great example – paying out sick leave is ableist. Anyone with a chronic condition not only has to burn through more of their sick leave than anyone else (unfortunate but probably unavoidable), they are also then financially penalised when they leave. This is unfair, and that unfairness is exactly why it’s wrong. At least part of our objection to institutionalised prejudices is ultimately because they are unfair.

        Yes, some of it (B can cover for A, A can’t cover for B) is unfortunate but is just inherent to the role. But part of it isn’t, and is simply unfair treatment for no good reason. That is always worth addressing.

    3. Eldritch Office Worker*

      You’re right, but there are lines and every company has to draw those lines as makes sense for their workforce. This is an inequity that’s causing a real monetary difference for the two different groups, incidentally outside of a JD review and comp analysis, which is a sign that something has to be different. It’s also causing unrest, and it’s a relatively easy thing to fix.

    4. Goldenrod*

      “I think the concern over fairness is vastly overblown.”

      I disagree. I used to be an “in office only” worker and now I have a hybrid option. Having experienced both sides, it’s WAAAAY more beneficial in terms of sick days to be able to work remotely. I hardly ever have to use sick time anymore. And I think it *is* unfair.

      I like Alison’s suggestion that in office workers simply get more sick days. I think that is only fair! Doing a job remotely is already a perk – it’s not fair for that to pay out financially as well.

      1. Trout 'Waver*

        But, it can’t ever really be fair is someone does Group A’s job for them when they’re out sick, but nobody does Group B’s job for them and they have to catch up when they’re out sick. There’s just no way to make that fair, especially since people have such disparate needs for sick time.

        Honestly, I think a big part of professionalism is recognizing that everyone has different needs. There’s no way to write a comprehensive policy that lets Alice manage unpredictable flare-ups of a chronic condition, Bob who needs every third Friday afternoon off, Candace who takes a month off every 3 years to visit family in faraway places, and Dennis who is a single parent without a support network. But if they’re all professionals who get their jobs done in a professional manner, there is no need either.

        1. Slow Gin Lizz*

          Yes, that aspect of it isn’t fair, but that’s why it’s helpful that Group B can do their jobs from home if they are ill or injured enough to not be able to make it into the office but still well enough to work. It sounds like Group A has some kind of service job that doesn’t pile up when they’re out sick but needs to be done every day, which is why Group B covers for them if Group A is out. So Group A benefits from taking a full sick day at home by not having to catch up on work when they’re back and Group B benefits from being able to work from home when they’re sick by not having to catch up on work when they’re back. Now, I can see the argument that Group B loses out when Group A is out sick because then they have to catch up on their own work even though they didn’t use a sick day themselves, but equally Group A loses out because they tend to use up more sick time and get a smaller payout when they leave.

          The solution is still to give Group A more sick time and not do the vacation payout at all. As soon as I started reading the letter I came up with the same advice that AAM did.

        2. hello*

          Sure, but is Group B paid more because their jobs are technical and can’t be done when they’re out? So not only are they paid more money, they also don’t have to use sick time AND get that paid out when they leave?

    5. EA*

      I agree, and it does not surprise me that this is a nonprofit. These two roles are fundamentally different; you can’t force everything to be equal. As someone in this industry, I feel like everyone is blowing this out of proportion in a very nonprofit way.

      There is no downside to letting Group B work from home, except Group A feeling like it’s unfair (life isn’t fair, and they are different jobs!). Hypothetical work from home abuse issues can be dealt with if they arise. And OP, don’t take unnecessary sick time and back yourself up at work just because some people might be annoyed!

      I do think that moving away from paying out sick time is probably the best route to take (pay out sick time in December and move to a new system in January, for example), and the Board might even be amenable since it “saves” money.

      1. hello*

        But if Group A continues to think things are unfair, what happens when a number of them leave over this policy? What if the org can’t fill those positions, and now Group B is doing more and more of Group A’s work? Sometimes making things feel more fair helps out in the long run.

        1. EA*

          Sometimes (most of the time?) as a business – and especially as a nonprofit without tons of flexibility on salaries and incentives – you can’t please everyone 100%, and yes, you do have to accept that people will leave over it. Assuming they have enough sick time to cover their needs, it seems weird to leave over someone else potentially getting a few days more than you. In this case, it sounds like Group B has more in-demand technical skills and I’d be more concerned about driving them off.

    6. RagingADHD*

      We aren’t talking about requirements. We’re talking about compensation – paid time off that is paid out if not used, essentially a cash bonus on leaving which could be significant.

      Anytime one group of workers finds out that their peers are eligible for additional compensation or bonuses that they are not, it’s going to make them rethink whether their compensation and working conditions are fair and appropriate to the work they do. That’s why discussing wages and working conditions is a legally protected right!

      That isn’t an overblown concern with fairness. It’s exactly the right amount of concern, because when your staff does not believe they are being fairly compensated they are likely to leave.

    7. Cacofonix*

      I have to agree with trout waver. There is a difference between fairness and equitable. Group A accountability is X and group B is Y. Be transparent when hiring, continue to be transparent, and strive to make things equitable, not “equal.” If that means crunching the numbers and finding remote workers don’t *need* as much overall sick time then do that. If it means payouts are larger for remote and abled workers, then fix that. “Fairness” is subjective, so you’re never going to please everyone. Things don’t have to be equal or perfect. Just stay away from discriminatory practices, and require that people do the jobs they agreed to do.

  3. A Poster Has No Name*

    “Despite being on sick leave, I still received messages asking for urgent help because my absence created strain on the team.”

    Was this from group A or group B? If it’s group A, that’s just a bit hypocritical and perhaps they can examine how it might seem unfair to them that you don’t have to take sick time but they benefit from that (and the fact that it sounds like it’s hard for group B to ever take genuine sick time when they should be resting).

    1. anon here*

      I agree entirely, but the requests could just as easily have been from Group B, which doesn’t help the LW.

    3. Dust Bunny*

      That’s either an “inadequate staffing” issue or a “failure to delegate authority in one’s absence” issue, and it could presumably be a problem for either group.

    4. LL*

      Considering that LW’s manager is the person who told them they had to use sick leave, I think the best way to deal with it is to set up an out of office message that directs people to ask LW’s manager about things or to just forward all these requests to the manager to handle. LW shouldn’t be taking sick leave AND working because then they lose the sick leave for times they actually need it.

  4. HonorBox*

    I absolutely agree that Group A should get additional sick time. They’re far more likely to be sick if they’re in person and working with the public. I think I’d probably impress on Group B, too, that there are indeed times when they’re sick that they shouldn’t be working. For instance, if you have a stomach bug, don’t press through it to get work done from home in between bathroom visits. Get some rest and get better. And with that, management needs to account for the fact that some of those technical things may just not get done for a day or two while someone gets better.

    And stop with the sick time payout. For a variety of reasons it isn’t a good practice. There’s the imbalance presented here. There’s the person who comes in sick just to preserve the time. There’s the unicorn who never gets sick and has a huge bank of time. There’s the financial liability that the company carries. You could give people time to adjust, but tell them that as of ____ (end of the fiscal year for instance) sick time will no longer be paid out when someone departs.

    1. Dawn*

      I’ve known other workplaces where they paid out sick time (or put all time into one bucket, which was paid out) and the first point you mention is exactly what ended up happening: people would come into work viciously ill and infect others just for the sake of picking up an extra hundred bucks at the end of the year.

    2. L-squared*

      As to your first paragraph, I agree, but I think you should leave it to the person to figure out.

      If I woke up feeling sick, threw up around 730, and was fine by 9, I may not feel up to coming into work, but can still be very productive from my couch.

      It also depends on the role. I’m in sales, so chances are (depending on the day) if I have laryngitis with no voice, I can’t work. But someone in accounting who doesn’t have to talk could.

      So I don’t know that you should necessarily have paramaters on when people should or shouldn’t call in, because each person can decide for themselves. Going with that, I feel it would make people need to justify it more. If someone is too sick to work or needs to take a sick day, then just let it be. But don’t ask “what is wrong” and have them have to explain that they have diarrhea vs. that they sprained their ankle.

      1. HonorBox*

        Oh I don’t disagree with you at all. I’m more stating it so that Group B can hear the business say, if you’re sick just go ahead and be sick and don’t try to press through. I was just reading into things when LW stated that Group B provides backup for Group A, but no one can provide backup for Group B. It is more about the company stating specifically that everyone will survive if someone from Group B misses a day because they’re too ill to work.

    3. Glen*

      paying out unused sick leave also feels pretty ableist. Anyone with a chronic disability/illness is now being financially penalised in yet another way.

    4. Bess*

      They’re all working in-person generally, and the issue is when they’re sick, some can be remote and some can’t. So group A may not be at any more risk than group B, they’re all in the same office coming in.

    5. ButtonBlue*

      I’m the unicorn! I have 1600 hours of sick leave banked (about 210 days) and if I leave the company I’ll lose it all. I just don’t get sick. My whole family is the same, we have incredible immune systems.

    1. Massive Dynamic*

      More paid sick days for group A and hiring more people into group B would probably fix things right up. B is stretched so thin that there’s no cross-trained coverage which is a really bad business plan. No wonder covering for As when they are out is such a struggle for the Bs as apparently nobody is available to help the Bs individually.

      1. Hroethvitnir*

        Yes! It should be acknowledged this isn’t a “just do x” situation in the sense that there is no solution that won’t upset people. But in as far as it makes sense for group B to work from home (but not be stretched so thin!), it makes sense people more exposed to infections and unable to wfh should get more sick days.

        Paying out holiday leave is a legal requirement here in Aotearoa, and the idea of not doing it horrifies me, but sick leave? That’s just bizarre. Once it’s a precedent people will get very upset to lose it though. Sigh.

  6. Maggie Moo*

    I would pay out all the sick time at the end of this year and move to an unlimited sick time policy/ open sick days. That will take the financial liability off the books and hopefully stop this back-and-forth around using sick days. Staff should feel free to use sick days as needed and to work as little or as much on those days as fits their needs.

    1. Funko Pops Day*

      This is the way.

      A note on implementation: I have unlimited sick time but the company can require documentation for more than 3 continuous days, and we have to switch to disability at 2 weeks of continuous absence.

      2. Global Cat Herder*

        This is what I have as well. Documentation might be requested at 3rd day. Short term disability at 2 weeks.

        Only one manager has ever asked for documentation. They were a jerk in many ways, so “this is your third sick day, you need to email me a doctor’s note by the end of the day” was just par for the course.

      3. Rachel*

        Where I work we have unlimited sick and short term disability and documentation requirements kick in around a week with some variation due to local laws about statutory sick leave.

    2. Melicious*

      I’ve never heard of paying out sick time. That’s… problematic even when there isn’t a disparity between types of employees. Stop doing that!

      1. Melicious*

        Financial incentive to not be sick
        1) encourages people to come into work sick
        2) is discriminatory to people who get sick more often or need to use it all for various reasons beyond their control

    3. MigraineMonth*

      Yes!

      Also, the organization needs to take a big step back and figure out what’s going on with the culture, because there’s a *lot* of open resentment and tribalism described this letter. Does the organization have a scarcity mindset and the two groups are pitted against each other in negotiations? Are there staffing/pay issues? Does management frequently try to keep the peace instead of resolving actual issues? (Because forcing your WFH employees to take sick days they don’t need is a ridiculous “solution”.)

    4. I Have RBF*

      This.

      Yes, the “unlimited” has functionally a soft limit that the managers know, but it is usually pretty fair. Absences of over two weeks may need medical verification, but other than that, it serves the purpose of assuring fairness, removing sick leave accumulation as a liability on the books, and shortstops the whining of group A about group B. You’re sick? Take sick time. You are able to WFH while laid up? Great. You can’t? Take sick time.

      My current position has unlimited sick time. This has enabled me to take my wife to medical appointments for cancer. Most companies would be nickle-and-diming me, wanting lots of paperwork for intermittent FMLA, cheese-paring my paycheck for what is now down to about 12 hours a month, at most.

      I used to have to track every migraine, bout of diarrhea, and “white night” to make sure I didn’t use too much PTO. Now, I just take off when I need to. Coupled with being fully remote, I actually use less sick time for myself than when I was in office.

  7. L-squared*

    I had this at a previous job.

    It wasn’t “exactly” the same, but close enough. Our home office was in 1 city, with about 20% of our staff. The rest were remote. There was no actual reason most the people who lived in the home office city needed to be in, except that the CEO wanted it. But, they were so strict, that you had 3 days that you MUST be in the office. So if you were sick on one of those days, you either had to take a sick day, or come in sick. Even though 2 days a week you were home anyway, the CEO was just a difficult person who wouldn’t even let you move the days around in a week. However, remote workers routinely worked while sick. We had one big PTO bucket, not separate sick and vacation time, so it made sense for them to work if they could to save it. When this was brought up as being completely unfair, CEO just ignored it.

    I think the ideal thing would be to give group A a few extra sick days, and relaxing and letting group B work remotely if they are able.

  8. ferrina*

    I absolutely agree that sick days shouldn’t be paid out. Sick days are there to ensure that people have time to recover their health without loss of income (for most circumstances). Paying out sick days 1) encourages people not to use their sick days, leading to more people coming to work sick, and making more people sick in the long run, 2) punishes people that do the right thing in staying home when they have communicable diseases and 3) punishes people that have chronic conditions (and if sick time is used for family, also people that are caregivers).

    Sick time is there to be used not to be collected for money

    1. Flor*

      All of this!

      This is why I’m in favour of unlimited sick days, because restricting them in any way basically punishes disabled people and caregivers. It’s not uncommon in salaried professional jobs in the UK, and has not, in my experience, led to a rash of people being out “sick” every Friday so they can have a long weekend.

      1. Orv*

        Being out “sick” every Friday seems like something you’d handle via other disciplinary means, anyway. Due to a combination of a generous accrual and good luck health-wise, I currently have enough sick leave banked that I could theoretically take every Friday off for over a year; however, if I tried to do so, I would expect my manager to call me out on it, and I doubt “I have the sick leave available” would be a satisfactory excuse.

        1. Flor*

          Plus the kind of person who pretends to be ill to get a three-day weekend on a regular basis probably has other, more tangible performance issues (and if they don’t, well, maybe you let them pretend they’re sick every week because they’re still doing twice as much work as their peers for the same pay).

        2. JustaTech*

          My company recently instituted a policy that if you call out sick either the day before or the day after a holiday/holiday weekend, and didn’t have a good reason (huh?) then you would be required to pay the holiday out of your vacation time.
          This was instituted because too many people were calling out to extend holiday weekends and it was messing with the shift work.
          But it wasn’t explained that way, nor was it limited to those job roles, so when people in completely different jobs got food poisoning over a holiday weekend they were super freaked out that they were going to get “talked to” by HR or their vacation docked for being genuinely sick.

          Also, no one, including managers, were told what kind of “evidence” would be needed that your reason was “good enough”. Most people aren’t going to go to Urgent care for a run of the mill stomach bug.

          1. Orv*

            That would freak me out too. I’m one of those people who will come in even if I feel unwell on a Monday or Friday just because I don’t want the stigma of making it look like I’m faking for a three-day weekend.

            1. JustaTech*

              Yup. I also came into work when I felt very borderline (wore a mask) because it was the Friday before a holiday weekend.
              It’s all completely unproductive and punitive and obnoxious.

        3. Lydia*

          Way back when I was in high school, my dad had accumulated so much sick leave that it wouldn’t roll over anymore. He started to take Fridays out “sick”, and it was pretty much accepted practice. He worked for the government, and I don’t know if they policy was to pay out sick leave when you retired, but he had accrued so much it didn’t matter if it paid out. He couldn’t get anymore. So, he took some off on Fridays for mental health days. Which I understand is different than calling out every Friday, but then if you’ve earned the time, then why not use it how you see fit?

      2. Margaret Cavendish*

        A former job offered 20 sick days per year – which sounds generous, but there were *so many* conditions.

        First, you were only allowed 3 occurrences before you started getting in trouble. So if you were sick for 2 days in January, then one of your kids was sick in February, and the other kid was sick in March – boom, 3 occurrences, and you’re getting counselled for attendance. Or if you had endometriosis, or migraines, or cancer treatments…any kind of chronic, recurring health condition meant that you were out of occurrences well before you were out of sick days.

        Then one year I got pneumonia, and ended up taking 2 weeks off work. I had a doctor’s note, and it was only one occurrence, so I should have been fine. But it turns out you also get “counselled” when you use up half your sick time for the year. Never mind that it was June, and I had zero days and zero occurrences up to that point – I had used up half my sick time, which meant a Serious Conversation.

        So we had 20 sick days in theory, but in practice we weren’t allowed to use them in any meaningful way. I get that they’re concerned about people abusing the PTO, but there’s no way around that – there’s no rule that you can put in place that somebody won’t find a loophole or a way to take advantage. Or rather, there is, but it doesn’t allow for any kind of nuance or discretion, and it creates an atmosphere of mistrust.

        1. Dawn*

          Oh, I had one of these, too. Legal statute at the time where I was required them to provide ten “emergency days” (not even sick days,) but for one thing you started getting in trouble after taking more than one, and for another, they didn’t count them as your legally-mandated days-you-can’t-get-in-trouble-for unless you explicitly said “I am taking an emergency day” and of course, they didn’t tell anyone that the verbiage you used mattered until you were already getting in trouble.

          Horrible, horrible workplace. A year after I left they went under and I wasn’t even remotely surprised or upset about it.

        2. Turquoisecow*

          My mom’s old job was like that, they got I think 15 sick days but if you used more than half there was a good chance your contract didn’t get renewed.

          This was for a school bus company and they were slightly understaffed so if many people called out on the same day they had trouble operating, but their reaction to this was to require a doctor note for like one day of illness, which was ridiculous.

        3. CommanderBanana*

          I don’t even understand how one is supposed to have a Serious Conversation about this. What does your HR do, sit you down and ask if you understand how very horrible you are for catching pneumonia??

          Workplaces that treat sick days like this are awful.

          1. Dawn*

            It’s been a while, but if I recall, the language they used with me was something along the lines of, “We have concerns about your absenteeism.”

            When I explained that I legally got 10 emergency days a year and that I was not yet over that limit, I was advised that “sick days” were not the same as legally-protected “emergency days” and I hadn’t specified when calling in.

            Reader, I’m a type 1 diabetic. I am very healthy for a type 1 diabetic, but it is inevitable that if I’m exposed to contagious illness at the same rate as other people, I will catch those illnesses more often and be sicker than average.

        4. Clisby*

          At the job I retired from, I had 18 sick days a year but none of that bureaucracy. (Sick leave didn’t cover sick children, though – that would have come out of PTO.)

      3. londonedit*

        Yep, this is how it works in my UK job too. We pretty much have ‘unlimited’ sick days, but how it works in this country is that you can self-certify as sick for up to 7 consecutive days, but after that you need a doctor’s note. Those now take the form of ‘fit notes’ rather than ‘sick notes’, where a doctor will either say you’re not fit to work, or that you ‘may be fit to work’ with certain accommodations (like not lifting things, or working reduced hours, or whatever). The minimum employers have to offer is Statutory Sick Pay, which isn’t much, but my employer will top that up to your full salary for up to 15 weeks depending on your length of service.

        When you come back to work after an extended absence, you have a ‘return to work’ meeting with your manager and HR, where you can discuss any accommodations you might need, or any help they can offer to make sure you’re OK being back at work. And of course, if someone has a pattern of sick time, or if someone is taking a lot of sick time, then HR and your line manager will call you in for a meeting to discuss what’s going on and whether there’s anything you need. And further to that, if someone’s abusing sick time, then that will also be dealt with. But sick time is completely separate to annual leave (holiday allowance) and it’s not paid out when you leave the company – it’s literally for use if you’re ill.

    2. General von Klinkerhoffen*

      “Sick time is there to be used not to be collected for money”

      I mean, yes, but I’ve known people who are routinely off sick when the allocation is about to expire (eg if calculated from your start date on 1 September, always having a mysterious stomach flu towards the end of August each year).

      If you fix a number of sick days, you have people using it before they lose it AND people working when they aren’t well enough. I agree with Alison that increasing or un-limiting sick days is a good answer.

      But I read the OP feeling more sorry for Team B than Team A – LW indicates that people prefer to work in-office, which suggests everyone is at home when they are very unwell, but only Team B feel obliged to work through it.

    3. Poppy of Dimwood Forest*

      Agree with this 100%.

      We didn’t pay out sickness if one left, but there was no cap and sick-leave could be rolled into retirement. We had too many people coming in ill during their years right before retirement because they wanted to bank as much sick-time as possible. We capped it, so that solved most of the problem.

  9. Chairman of the Bored*

    I’m impressed that (apparently?) nobody has ever “struggled with productivity” while working on-site.

    1. Dust Bunny*

      Eh, this isn’t without precedent. We had a group of employees who lost their work from home privileges specifically because they didn’t get enough done. There were fewer distractions at the office. (They no longer work for us, but not because of this. It was a long time ago.)

        1. Slow Gin Lizz*

          I am WAY more unproductive in the office than I am at home, b/c I’m super easily distracted and have way fewer distractions at home.

        2. I Have RBF*

          Seriously. I can find just as many ways to procrastinate and be “not working” in an office as I can at home. Plus, coworkers are distracting when they hang out, leaning on your desk, talking sportsball for hours when you are actually trying to concentrate.

    3. Spencer Hastings*

      I think they mean that some people struggled with productivity *relative* to when they were in-person.

    4. Allonge*

      Yes, there are people who work less when not visibly supervised and find WFH distracting. Acknowledging that does not mean that WFH should not be available to anyone.

      It sounds like it was addressed here (OP speaks of this as if those people are not there any more).

    5. Poppy of Dimwood Forest*

      We recently went through a timesheet and telework audit.
      It turned out that 25% of the people were not online at all during the prescribed core hours.

      Some people had moved out of the area even though they are required to live within 50 miles of the worksite. Whenever there was an mandatory onsite meeting they would take vacation time or call out sick.

      Had they been productive in office? I don’t know, but they weren’t productive in the telework environment.

      1. ferrina*

        I think it depends on what productivity looks like in the job. There are ways to tell if someone is productive outside of “were you logged on?” Were they meeting their KPIs? Are their assignments completed on-time and to the necessary quality? Is their workload what you would expect for someone in their role? And if there aren’t KPIs or key workplace expectations, that’s a management problem. In my current role, I’m not always logged on during standard hours, but I meet all the expectations of my role (and take on things that are outside scope but that my skills are very useful for). I recognize that some roles have an element of timeliness that requires immediate availability in certain hours- for example, receptionist roles where you are expected to assist visitors and callers, or helpdesks that have hours of availability. In those cases, being online during core hours are necessary expectations.

        Totally agree with the relocation though- that can be a tax liability for the business. That absolutely needs to be reported.

      2. I Have RBF*

        Then they weren’t managed properly. Unproductive people stand out if there are regular check-ins, meaningful KPIs, and other objective productivity measures.

        Some of the things I need to do are: be available for questions, make all of my meetings, and resolve my tickets in a timely fashion. Yes, sometimes I take a long lunch, and work tickets in the evening and weekends. Some things can’t be done during regular hours.

        I’m no less productive than when I commuted an hour or more each way just to sit in a loud open plan and log in to computers several miles away.

        Yes, some people require some sort of buddy system and oversight to keep them on track. This is not a problem with remote work, it is a problem with management.

    6. testingatheory*

      as someone currently sitting in the office for my one mandatory in-office day, reading this because I’m bored out of my mind and ironically overstimulated by the sound of the noise cancelling hum to the point I cannot focus, hard agree. everyone is different and it would be nice if these endless remote work vs in office conversations had just a teaspoon of nuance to acknowledge that.

  10. Scarlet ribbons in her hair*

    I vote no regarding unlimited sick time, because I once worked at a company where the office manager decided that we would all have unlimited sick time, no questions asked. I knew that the majority of employees were slackers who would take advantage of this, but the office manager never asked me for my opinion. I did not take even one minute off as sick time. After a few months, when she got tired of employees not showing up (but still getting paid), the office manager announced that not only would the unlimited sick time policy cease, but we were now required to bring in a doctor’s note if we were out sick for even just one day. As I hadn’t been out sick at all during the unlimited sick time period, I was very annoyed. I left the company soon afterwards, and luckily I didn’t get sick (and have to go to the doctor) during my remaining time there.

    1. Lydia*

      That’s not really a reason not to do it. That’s specifically a bad management situation that could have been addressed by a better manager. I worked for a company that had unlimited sick time, and we were all working really hard, but our group also had the highest call outs of our location. They threatened to take away our unlimited sick time instead of looking at why we may need more days out. It was aggravating to be told that, yes, we were meeting and exceeding goals, and that when we needed a big push, everyone was involved and on board to get through it, but all that illness we were having maybe from the work we were doing? That’s a bad look.

      1. NothingIsLittle*

        I mean sure, someone’s negative experience with a single manager isn’t reason enough, but I think it highlights a common problem in unlimited sick leave. When the leave is unlimited people feel more entitled to know and judge why you’re taking it.

        Even in your example, the unlimited nature of the leave made it easier to characterize department-wide sick problems as taking advantage of a lax policy instead of being overworked to the point of illness because there’s no metric of reasonable use for it to be measured against. If you had had a specific number of allotted sick days, it’s easier to say that you are entitled to that time. (Or at least, in my experience that holds true)

      2. Scarlet ribbons in her hair*

        “we were all working really hard”

        “we were meeting and exceeding goals”

        That’s fine, but that did not apply to my company. As I said, most of the employees were slackers. I used to wonder why they had been hired in the first place. I just couldn’t believe that they had been the best applicants for their jobs. Eventually, I found out that the office manager hired them because they had all agreed to work for very low pay. (The office manager who hired them replaced the office manager who had hired me.) Whenever they were asked during their interviews what kind of salary they were looking for, no matter what they said, they were always told, “Oh, that is more than what this job pays.” And they always agreed to work for the lower salary. And they would do as little work as possible. No way were they getting sick from all the stress they suffered by trying to do a good job. They weren’t even trying to do a good job.

        1. MigraineMonth*

          It sounds to me like they were doing an amount of work commensurate to their pay. Without knowing how they perform in a position where they aren’t severely underpaid, I don’t know that they were slacking.

          I agree with Lydia, though: this sounds much more like a bad manger problem than an unlimited-sick-days problem. Your manager clearly did not value their employees enough to pay them decently, didn’t have individual performance conversations when they were slacking, and went from an overly permissive approach to sick days straight to an overly restrictive approach without trying anything in between.

        3. Lydia*

          Again, though, that wasn’t the policy. It was management. There are bad policies, but your experience sounds more like bad management, especially with the low salary detail.

    2. Dawn*

      The solution there is to manage the slackers, not deny everyone a benefit because managers are too cowardly to just do their job and manage people.

    3. ferrina*

      That would infuriate me!

      Unlimited sick time can be done right, but it needs to be managed correctly. “Unlimited” doesn’t actually mean “unlimited”- it means “we aren’t enforcing an exact number”. In good scenarios, this means that employees can take the time they need without worrying if they are a little over. It gives managers the flexibility to give independence to strong employees (like you).

      My work does unlimited time, and monitor it in a couple different ways. First, we track the time off. Individual managers and individuals don’t need to track, but HR keeps a loose eye on it. If HR is seeing anomalies, they’ll dig deeper to find out what’s going on. Next, we manage to performance. If someone’s performance dips, we’ll look closer into what is going on. If a team is impacted by coverage issues because one person isn’t doing their full workload, that’s a serious issue that HR will get involved with. But if a strong performer is having a round year and needs some extra sick time, it’s easy to make sure they get what they need. (note: if anyone will be out for several weeks for illness, that’s when FMLA/short-term disability kicks in)

      1. I Have RBF*

        This.

        The unlimited sick time at my job has been a blessing in dealing with my wife’s cancer. Yes, as my manager told me, there are “guidelines” for when you need to start using FMLA instead, but for most things I just take a few hours here and there, and then don’t worry too much about the occasional evening and weekend.

    4. Seashell*

      I can’t imagine managing to get a same day doctor’s appointment every time, let alone trying to get to the doctor if I were vomiting or had diarrhea.

      1. amoeba*

        Don’t know if it exists in the US, but some places do have telehealth options that can give you your certificate by video call hereabouts…. (We have more or less unlimited sick leave in my part of Europe, but we do require a doctor’s certificate after a certain time – for more than three days is most common, but companies are allowed to ask from day one. Some shitty ones do. However, the system is of course also optimised for that, so it’s not that hard to get one when you need it…)

        1. Lydia*

          It does exist in the US, and often you can get same day urgent care clinic appointments, but it’s still a hassle to have to do if you’re not feeling well.

  11. M2*

    Stop paying out sick leave. This creates people not using their sick leave and makes Group B more likely to work entirely when they are sick to have it paid out, even if they aren’t able to do 100% of their role when sick. It also is a financial liability for a company especially for a non profit!

    I would give Group A more sick leave since they are front facing and allow a certain # of sick days to roll over, but not pay them out when you leave. I worked at an organization who let sick days roll over up to 6 months accrued leave.

    I would not do unlimited sick leave because I have seen people overuse it. I am also not a fan of unlimited vacation. I have seen people not use it while others take 3 months off a year and others on their team take 4 weeks off.

  12. TheBunny*

    To everyone telling OP to just give Group A more sick time, i feel like you’ve never tried to get anything past a non profit board that has financial implications (more sick days could equal more sick time payouts!!! is all OP will hear from them. )

    Understandably, but more so than anywhere else I’ve ever worked, non profits pay attention to every dollar.

    I would think most of the frustration is the feeling that those employees who can work remotely have a larger “rainy day fund” available to them. I’d start with seeing about handling this and seeing what happens.

    1. Eldritch Office Worker*

      You’re absolutely right! But the suggestion to stop paying out sick time should help that on the bottom line, if it moves forward. Also if this is really upsetting people, turnover is also expensive.

      I doubt it will change tomorrow, but I think a decent HR or finance analyst could make a convincing argument that this will save dollars.

    2. BethRA*

      It needs to be both – more sick time for Group A (because they can’t work from home), and stopping the practice of paying out unused sick leave, both because of the financial liability, and because it creates an incentive for people to work/come in when they’re sick – which puts everyone at risk.

    3. Dust Bunny*

      I work for a smallish nonprofit. We get 240 hours of vacation and . . . I have no idea how many hours of sick time; I currently have about 400 stored up. So it’s not technically unlimited but it’s almost functionally unlimited unless you’re really serious ill or injured (my former supervisor was in a serious car accident and was out for a solid month and still didn’t use all of his time). And we have a sick leave pool to which we can donate/from which people can borrow.

      Nonprofits can do this, too.

      1. Boof*

        Yea, I think generous + pool and no payout for unused sick time makes the most sense – vs unlimited but it depends I guess how much of a concern it is whether there will be suddenly a bunch of absenteeism or something unlimited (I don’t know if some folks feel more comfortable having a theoretical limit or not)

    4. Dawn*

      You’re correct that it may be difficult to get through the board, but that’s not an excuse, although it’s sure one that people love to lean on rather than effectively manage something.

      At a bare minimum, OP should at least try. “We’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas!” from management should never fly anywhere.

    5. Melicious*

      I agree that giving Group A more sick time WITHOUT stopping the payouts is going to change the problem, not solve it. Stopping the payout is 100% the most important option to implement. Probably ALSO give Group A more sick time, but not that alone.

  13. NothingIsLittle*

    As someone who almost always has no more than a day in my sick bank (chronic health problems), I’m not sure I think unlimited sick leave is a great idea. When you have a limited number of hours for sick leave, that can support the idea that employees shouldn’t be hassled for taking time that falls in those hours. Some managers will still hassle you, but there’s a better argument that your sick leave wouldn’t accrue at a rate the company wasn’t prepared to support.

    It’s not the same as unlimited vacation, sure, but I think it has a lot of the same problems in terms of being expected to justify the use of that time.

    1. MigraineMonth*

      I’m sorry this is something you’ve had to deal with. Do you think some explicit guidance about the expected amount to be used would help?

    2. amoeba*

      Certainly depends on the company culture, but I live in a country with unlimited sick leave and that’s typically not a big problem in non-toxic work environments!

  14. Museum Conservator*

    I’ve been wondering how to navigate this a bit myself. I work in a department where there are various specialties, each with their own manager, but we are a single department under one director. One manager in particular does not like employees to work from home, while other managers in the department allow their employees to work from home 1-3 days a week. When someone working for the non-WFH manager inevitably gets covid, they end up having to take PTO days, while the others simply work from home. We all do the same type of work, for what it’s worth.

    1. Strive to Excel*

      That sounds like your director needs to step in and make a ruling one way or the other. If department policy is that an employee can WFH if they are not feeling well, then the manager who doesn’t like their employees to WFH needs to accept that and deal with their dissatisfaction.

      1. Museum Conservator*

        I did push for this and unfortunately the director decided that it can be up to the individual managers. Unsurprisingly, this is only one of many bizarre management choices within my department. I’m hoping to move on soon.

  15. Heather*

    Allison is right, this is easy. The two easiest changes are: 1. create a transition to pay out current sick time/trade for vacation and 2. reset everyone with sick time equivalent to their roles with no future pay outs.
    Example: Remote Workers get 7 sick day and In-Person workers get 10.
    I would also announce in November and make the change at the new year to ease the transition.

  16. Debby*

    LW, another option might be to ask Group A and Group B what they think might be a fair solution? I have found that sometimes someone comes up with a really great idea, and it’s even better when the employees themselves come up with an answer. I don’t know if it will work in your situation, but might be worth a try?

  17. Chad H*

    I think the even more simple solution than “More sick days” is “Unlimited Sick days (fair use policy applies)” If someone is taking significant more than average, then ask questions; If someone takes a long period, then you can ask abnout what happened to both verify it and establish if further support is neccessary. Otherwise, don’t sweat if its 4, 6, or even 12 days a year.

    1. L*

      I like the way my employer handles sick time, and I don’t think we’ve ever had issues with anyone abusing it: we get unlimited sick days, but we have to have a doctor’s note if we’re off more than 5 consecutive days (because that’s when short-term disability/salary continuance kicks in, where we still get full pay but it comes from a different pot), and if we’re off more than 15 days in a year they can ask for a note for subsequent absences, though they use their discretion on that, so for instance they aren’t going to hassle someone with a known chronic illness about notes, especially if they’re otherwise reliable.

      1. Lydia*

        That’s how it worked for a company I worked for with unlimited sick time. It also helped when a bunch of us came down with H1N1 and weren’t allowed to come back to work for a good long time. We knew we could all take the time we needed to get well, and at the end of it they required a doctor’s note to verify we were (most likely) in the clear.

      2. Orv*

        I’m not sure that’d work where I live; it takes more than five days to get a doctor’s appointment.

        1. Pillow Castle*

          I’ve started using urgent care as my main doctor if I have anything but a routine need. I see them more than my actual doc these days. Appointment times are ridiculous.

      3. I Have RBF*

        That’s sort of how it works at my job. I let people know that I had to take time out of my days for my wife’s cancer related appointments, and my boss said to just let him know. I seldom need a whole day currently, so that helps ease the burden on the business.

  18. Goldenrod*

    My workplace pays out a percentage of accrued sick time on an annual basis. (I think it’s like a third of the amount?)

    What’s nice about this is, if you hardly ever use sick time, you do get a nice little payout yearly, so it’s an incentive to not use it. But we also accrue sick time very generously, so if you do need it, you have it. You just won’t get the annual payout.

  19. Elara Harper*

    For everyone saying give group A more sick time, how would that work? We have a similar situation in my workplace, and we haven’t figured it out. At our work place, in office tasks can’t be broken out by job title or seniority, and what happens if a person transfers positions or gets promoted? It’s difficult to take benefits away once granted. I’m in group B, and I see that it’s not fair, but see no way to fix it (and we don’t payout sick pay-but it’s still an issue).

    1. Spencer Hastings*

      It sounds like at the LW’s workplace, things are more delineated, so they can say something based on job role, like “Llama Groomers get X days of sick leave, Digital Llama Analysts get Y days.” If it varies more from person to person, maybe management could estimate how much of each person’s workload is necessarily onsite and pro-rate the “extra sick day buffer for onsite workers” based on that percentage? Maybe revisiting yearly to make sure the estimates are accurate and up to date?

    2. Strive to Excel*

      Have your baseline level of sick pay, then anyone working specific jobs gets job-specific sickpay. Same as how a factory might pay employees on the floor a shoe subsidy to get good steel toes that they wouldn’t pay to office workers.

      1. MigraineMonth*

        My workplace has pay increases tied to tasks. For example, customer service workers get +$X/hr for bilingual work. Or workers who take “undesirable” shifts get +$Y/hr for those shifts.

        That way it’s really clear that you get the additional pay as long as you are doing that work, and if you change positions/shifts and stop doing that work, you stop getting the additional pay. I don’t know if that’s a difficult transition for those who lose the pay; it probably depends on the reason for the change and whether their base pay rate goes up.

  20. JSPA*

    Different jobs also have different pay scales, and different job requirements.

    Look…

    If there isn’t enough sick leave to cover people’s sickness, that’s an issue.

    If group A is badly-paid, to the point that sick pay when leaving is carrot that keeps them going, that’s a payscale problem, as well as a perverse incentive (as Alison pointed out).

    But “some people with skillz end up with more money, sometimes in more than one way”? Yes. Yes, they do. Develop those skills, and you too get that bump.

    And doing work when you’re out on sick leave, but not really doing paid work so that people don’t have emotions about it??? This is one of those, “your workplace is suffering from warped attitudes, and internalizing them will do you no good at all” situations.

    This is not how a nice group of coworkers who generally have each other’s backs, normally function! Bringing everyone up should be the goal ( If equality between different roles is even a valid goal in the first place, which…nah, not intrinsically).

    You know: teach some more people those specialized tasks.

    But tearing people down as a way to be equal? That’s not the sign of a supportive, caring workplace. Even if there are supportive people in it.

    There’s a carve out for strikes or “work to rule.” But outside of those organized protests (with a defined goal!) asking some people to work less / be bored / suffer more / work without taking regular pay? Again, nah. What your coworkers are having is a snit fit, more than a labor action. Maybe the company doesn’t want them to get organized (?) But it’s frankly often easier to work with a bargaining unit that has specific asks, than to deal with Random outbreaks of desperation, anger, grumpiness and hurt feelings.

    They may have very legitimate beef…or not. But this isn’t the way to go about it.

    1. ZSD*

      I don’t think it’s true that the group that has the opportunity to work from home has *more* skills than the other group — they just have *different* skills. The group that can’t work from home probably has more-developed soft skills/people skills that allow them to provide high-quality direct services to the group’s clients.

      1. kanada*

        Per the letter, they explicitly do have more skills–Group B is capable of (and expected to) cover Group A’s work, but the reverse isnt’ true.

        1. JSPA*

          Yep. They literally do.

          Granted, group A is may well be better at their own jobs than Group B is at doing group A’s jobs.

          But that’s equally true of essentially all jobs.

          Unloading trucks, working fast food–it takes talents to do them well, and if you do it badly, people get hurt. And yet, loading dock jobs and fast food jobs pay less than, say, doctor or lawyer (or for that matter, paralegals, to take the the licensing aspect out of the picture.)

          Some people will see this as pure classism, but, well, for now* at least, there really are more people who can quickly learn / train to operate the french fryer safely than there are people who can quickly pick up the basics of drafting a brief.

          *This may change with AI, I suppose–but the job will still require spotting when the AI is hallucinating / confabulating.

  21. 2 Cents*

    Are your sick and vacation days in one bucket? Every place I’ve worked (including a hospital system!) has had this arrangement, and it’s created many, many cases of people coming in to work when they should’ve stayed at home because they didn’t want to lose vacation days later in the year. If that’s not the case for your org, then please ignore.

  22. kanada*

    I’d strongly caution against just eliminating sick day payouts. Based on your description, Group B employees are more crucial to your business, and reducing their compensation because other employees are upset would be a great way to alienate them.

    1. kanada*

      also, don’t downplay Group B’s concerns about their work piling up when they have to take sick time. you point out that both groups are salary-exempt, which means that requiring them to take sick time could very well result in them having to work unpaid overtime later

      1. Fíriel*

        I’m not sure where I land on eliminating sick day payouts (there seems a strong case for it to me based on it creating an incentive to work when sick) but I agree that it seems a very bad idea to do two things to appease group A (more sick days and removing B’s benefits) without also addressing group B’s concerns. Could some group A members be cross-trained to even a modicum of competency covering group B sick days? Could an additional group B member be hired to reduce their overall workload, making it more feasible for them to take sick days?

        1. kanada*

          yeah that’s what I mean, I think in a vacuum there’s a good argument for it, but it doesn’t change the fact that if all you do is eliminate the sick day payout, people in Group B are going to see it as you cutting their compensation just because people with a different job think it’s unfair (because… well, you would be)

          1. amoeba*

            You could also give group B more sick days then they currently have, though – if you get rid of the payout, this should not lose the company any money? And group B could then at least have the benefit of being able to take as much sick leave as needed, while also not being pressured to take it when they don’t actually want/need to. So, like if they all have 10 currently, change it to 15, no payout, people who cannot work from home get an extra 5 to make up for that (or whatever).

  23. Strive to Excel*

    Group A gets more sick days. Group B maybe gets less (depending on state regulations, because they can’t fall below the minimum). Sick day payouts removed for everyone. If sick & PTO are combined, uncombine them.

  25. commensally*

    Is it not possible to allow Group A a certain number of work-from-home sick days? (And perhaps limit the number that Group B can use without a special exception?)

    I worked through the pandemic in a similar situation where around half the staff had job duties that generally required being on site, and around half the staff had job duties that could largely be done at home. During lockdown we accepted that some jobs could not move to WFH, but afterward, we had a policy that you could work from home if you had to quarantine – and that applied to all staff. If you were working a job that didn’t usually involve WFH, you were expected to be clocked in and to find admin things to do (for example, I spent several days organizing my email very well, updating documentation on some procedures, and preparing for an evaluation meeting that wouldn’t happen for months.) If they really didn’t have any of that kind of admin catchup they could do, a supervisor could assign a special project.

    The Covid rules have mostly expired and most people in both groups just use sick leave now, but we still have a formal policy that anyone can take WFH days with supervisor approval when needed, even if their normal job duties require being in the building, and if it’s more than one or two days, unless there’s special arrangements made, everyone is expected to use sick leave. It works pretty well. (And it also acknowledges that people likely aren’t doing the same kind of work on an emergency WFH day as they would on a normal workday, regardless of their position.)

    1. Lab Rabbit*

      Is it not possible to allow Group A a certain number of work-from-home sick days?

      Literally the second paragraph:

      Group A: Employes whose specific job duties must be done on-site and no part can be performed remotely.

    2. Dust Bunny*

      In spite of what a small minority of people seem to believe, some jobs really cannot be done remotely, even in part. Please a) read the original post carefully and b) believe OPs when they say it’s not a thing for some jobs.

      1. commensally*

        And my long reply accidentally posted as a new thread for some reason but see below: I work in a job that “absolutely cannot be done remotely even in part” and yet it was still possible for our managers to find ways to provide WFH for us a few days a year once it was mandated from above. We could never be even regularly work from home one day a week. My point was that in my experience of working one of those jobs, the managers 100% have an option of making this possible for occasional employee emergencies even if means the employee doing very different duties (still within their job description) that day.

        1. Boof*

          I think this letter spelled out the ones who can’t work from home are basically directly helping clients. Unless they get a bunch of phone calls I don’t see how that could be done remotely.

        2. Nancy*

          Regardless of what some employers may have done in 2020 to deal with an unusual situation, some jobs truly cannot be done at home.

        3. Evan88*

          I think your WFH experience of finding admin tasks to occupy your time is…unique to your experience. It’s great your managers found ways to do it, but I think it’s unrealistic for a lot of people. Not many in person jobs are going to let employees spend several days at home organizing their email and updating documents, no matter how much of an emergency it is.

    3. amoeba*

      I mean, we do that for days where, for instance, the office/lab is closed due to construction. Or even if somebody is healthy but has to be at home for a delivery or to have something fixed. It works fine – but I honestly don’t see the benefit or doing it when people are sick. Just give them enough sick leave that they can actually stay at home and not work! (If you stop paying it out, I’d wager that will suddenly become more popular for the people who *can* wfh, and I think that’s a good thing – stuff like an injured foot aside, when you’re sick, it’s definitely better for you to rest and not work!)

  26. Ann O'Nemity*

    Group A needs more sick leave. They cannot work from home. Their work can be covered by Group B.

    Group B needs more employees. They can work from home, but are pressured to work when sick because there is not enough coverage. Group A cannot cover for them.

    How do you pay for this? Stop paying out sick leave.

    2. Anecdata*

      Group B also needs more employees if they are going to be covering Group A’s sick days, but still getting the same amount of back-office strategic work done annually

  27. Official Title Unicorn*

    I am also someone who can cover for others in Group A like roles but can do all my real work remotely if needed. And someone without a backup for what I do – in fact it is unlikely to happen because I have a very unique skill set.
    However, the Group A where I am sees how essential I am to the team, and how much more I am at work or working than most of them. Unlike them, my responsibilities cannot be left at the office. I have to slip out of office parties early, or skip some of the fun events. When working from home, I am available via Zoom / Teams / Google Meeting the entire day and answer promptly. All of this helps.
    Plus none of us have sick time, just PTO.

  28. Lacey*

    Yes group A should get some more sick time.

    But also, group A is not noticing the disadvantage of being able to work from home when you’re sick – which is that you might want to fully disconnect but the expectation will be that you’ll usually work.

  29. MistOrMister*

    Who in the world is paying out sick time when people leave?? When I have been fortunate to have both sick leave and PTO, I have never had my sick leave paid out when I leave and wouldn’t think to expect it – PTO yes, sick leave no. It would make much more sense for the company to stop paying out sick time to departing employees and to consider giving the people who can’t do any part of their job remotely more days each year. I am fully remote and have not had to take any sick leave over the past year because when I feel bad I can generally power through at home. I have commisserated with more than one fully remote colleague about how we are able to take many fewer sick days due to being home. Given that many people in OP’s company who can work at home instead of taking sick leave do so, the company should have no trouble giving extra days to the people who can only work on site. They have already budgeted these days and people aren’t using them, so just slide some days to the people who need more. And for the love of pete, stop paying out sick leave immediately!!

  30. spiriferida*

    Not to say that there’s not people who would be disgruntled just by a difference in sick day policy even if everything else was equal, but I can’t help wondering if there might be other divisions between Group A and Group B that mean any differences in treatment lead to heightened frustration. Often in situations like this, there’s a divide – overall compensation, hourly vs. salaried, etc. between the in-person and remote-possible jobs, especially if there’s a difference in skills required.

    It might not be possible to change the responsibilities of the people in Group A/Group B, if there’s an organizational budget involved, or if the technical skills required for Group B’s work require a certain education and skillset for the role. But besides the vacation days question, I’d maybe look at where the friction points come up when someone in your organization calls out sick, and consider how to make that as painless as is feasible, and how generally folks feel supported when it comes to the responsibilities of their particular pile of hats.

    1. spiriferida*

      And I realize I didn’t say it as explicitly as I meant to, but: you need to make sure there isn’t inequity in the pay scale, compensation, treatment, and expectation between these two groups. Especially if all the managerial folks fall into Group B.

      1. MigraineMonth*

        I’m surprised there’s so much animosity between the groups, even if there is a significant difference in pay/benefits. Group A and Group B are in different roles with obviously different requirements; their pay and working conditions shouldn’t need to be identical.

        I’d look more at the culture and see if there are ways the groups are being pitted against each other. Are they being given different levels of respect? Is the organization blaming choices on the other group instead of overall managing the budget (e.g. denying raises to group A because they need to hire a new person for group B)? Is this residual tension from when group A had to take significant risks during pandemic quarantines and group B didn’t?

        Something has gone terribly wrong when management thinks telling LW not to work on days she wants to because group A will get upset is any kind of “solution”.

  31. JPalmer*

    Give Group A more sick time, but not sick time that is paid out.

    Say you normally give 3 weeks to A and B. Give 3 weeks to A, but an ‘On-site Non-payout, non-rollover week’. Accompany it with language of “We recognize that our on-site workers are more likely to be exposed to season sickness and due to the importance of them being healthy, they will need to call out more. As such, we are providing them an additional week of sick time that does not roll over year to year and can not be cashed out should they leave the company. This on-site week of sicktime will refresh with each calendar year.

    Realistically this is because on-site work is put under more strain and requirements (via commutes, sickness exposure, etc). Our society needs to reckon with that fact and provide more accommodation to folks who are demanded to work on-site, especially when it isn’t necessary.

  32. Harper*

    I don’t know if these roles are salaried or hourly, but why are salaried workers, who regularly put in extra hours or travel with no additional compensation, nit-picked and forced to use PTO when they’re sick? That’s not how this is supposed to work. In my company, sick time is basically managed via the honor system – if you’re sick, you stay home, and you don’t have to use PTO. Some people work from home when they’re sick (like when they have a cold); others don’t work when they’re too sick to do so. If someone uses a disproportionate amount of sick time, their manager deals with it as appropriate.

  33. Wondering*

    Is there some reason that workload can’t be managed so that other members of Group A can cover for members for Group A? Looping Group B out of having to take on that extra work. Or that members of Group B can’t get some kind of backup from other members of Group B? I’m sure there are lots of workplaces where everyone’s job is so individualized that there’s no backup for anyone, but that’s always going to create problems when there are unavoidable absences. There are going to be vacations and illnesses and injuries, and “work just piles up” isn’t a great way of dealing with that, longterm.

  34. SB*

    Why are people working from home when they’re sick?

    Just be sick and rot in your bed and watch your comfort shows and order DoorDash. It’s very relaxing.

    1. anon here*

      Because if they *can* work, they’d rather have the day available for when they really need it or get the day paid out when they leave.

    2. a clockwork lemon*

      The letter writer specifically says that the reason they’re working from home when they’re sick is because they’re taking “sick” days when they would most likely pre-pandemic have powered through and brought their nasty headcold to the office with them.

      Taking a sick day when you’re gross, but still mostly functional, can be more stressful than it’s worth when you know nobody is covering for you and you’re going to have to spend the next few days playing catch-up just because you have a cough or needed to sleep in a couple of extra hours.

    3. Orv*

      It’s not that relaxing when you know work is piling up that you’ll need to catch up on, and people are likely getting annoyed at you because urgent tasks aren’t being done.

      I’ve been that person troubleshooting a problem remotely when I was so sick I could barely sit up, just to avoid having people angry at me over being inconvenienced.

        1. Orv*

          There’s nothing to be done about it. My department can’t afford *two* IT people so I have no cover.

          1. SB*

            Well, they’re going to have to figure out how to afford ZERO IT people after they work you to collapse.

            But I hear you – it still sucks. It’s nice to be valuable, but they should still treat you like a person a not a resource.

            1. Orv*

              The reality of tech as a field is it’s either this or some dot-com that will expect 60 hour weeks. Plus I’m over 40 so my resume might as well say I’m already deceased at the top.

    4. SB*

      Ah, see if I have head cold that’s contagious, I’m also usually producing sub-quality work too. My brain slows way the eff down and I have to end up re-doing it or someone else does. It’s a waste of time and resources.

      If I just have the sniffles, our work culture is to put on a mask and show up.

      I feel my workplace gets enough out of me (i’m salaried and have long hours) that I’m not going to keep working when I feel like death. I’ve done that before and I’m absolutely done with it.

    5. metadata minion*

      I’ve had days where I’m ok to work if I can do it in my comfy pjs and not have to commute (I walk to work), or where my depression is bad and it will actually be better for me to work but I’m mopey and grumpy enough that I should really not be around other humans.

    6. TEV*

      I think there’s edge cases where WFH can be a good compromise without working while you should be recovering.

      Say you have a generic respiratory viral illness and Days 1 and 2, yes you’re resting up. By Day 3, you feel well enough to work, but you’re still coughing and sneezing all over the place. You could use WFH since you’re feeling better but still contagious.

      Or say you have a school aged child who’s sick. They’re not so ill that they need full-time tending, but you want to be able to check on them during your breaks, make them meals, bring them medicine, etc.

      Or your partner had a minor medical procedure with sedation (colonoscopy, dental procedure, etc.) and is doing fine but can’t be left alone.

      All situations where sick leave would ordinarily be required that WFH could be used instead.

  35. Momma Bear*

    Revisit what WFH means – WFH is a privalidge that can be revoked at any time in my company. It has to be cleared with your manager and if the work requires you to be on-site, you need to be ready to pivot to being on-site. You earn it, and if you fail to keep up, you lose it. Yes, sometimes we use WFH instead of sick days, but we have just one pot of PTO. And any WFH for that reason (or a sick kid or whatever) needs managerial approval.

    I’d offer WFH with x number of sick days and on-site with Y number of sick days (more than WFH). That way you acknowledge that sometimes people can WFH while mildly sick or injured when it wouldn’t be possible for other folks.

    I also like the idea of the WFH folks being able to help the on-site folks sometimes. It’s always been appreciated when I’m in the office when I recognize that it’s an all hands on deck day. I think that might help mitigate the resentment. Less us vs them and more “we’re all in it together.”

    1. I Have RBF*

      No. WFH is not a “privilege”, it is a logical process of reducing a company’s real estate spend that is also good for employee morale. If my boss “revoked” my remote “privilege” I would quit.

      It is illogical to make people travel to an office to just log in to a bunch of computers in a data center or meet on Zoom with people in different offices.

      Please stop with the “privilege” BS. For many people it is what enables them to work at all.

      Also, “privilege” implies that work is like mandatory schooling, or prison, where the warden allows or revokes “privileges” for good behavior. It is infantilizing. It is just a different location to do the same job.

  36. nonprofit director*

    Stop paying out unused sick leave. That creates an incentive to not use it. You can still allow employees to accumulate xxx hours of sick leave so it operates like an insurance policy, but don’t pay out unused leave. This is what our nonprofit organization does and it works well. For example: “Sick leave may accrue to a maximum of xxx hours. Accrued, unused sick leave is not paid out upon termination of employment.”

    And consider providing a little more sick leave to Group A employees, if there is an easy way to define them. For example, “Employees in positions that are required to work 100% on-site are eligible for xx hours of sick leave per year.” With xx being more hours than xx allotted to employees who are able to work remotely.

  37. commensally*

    I’m speaking as a person who was in a job that “absolutely could not be done remotely” and yet when we were in a situation where our headquarters mandated a certain number of WFH sick days for everyone, our managers somehow figured out how to give us WFH days. A job that can’t have any regular work from home days can absolutely still accommodate a few emergency WFH days a year, unless the management is invested in inflexibly defining certain jobs as a different class of people and refusing to acknowledge that WFH days may look different from in-office days.

    But I find it very hard to believe that there are any jobs where absolutely nothing that would be beneficial to the company for the employee to do can be done offsite. Even someone working as a landscaper or a grocery stocker or custodian or whatever could be offered some online trainings or equivalent to cover a few WFH days a year. We had an “absolutely can’t work from home” employee spend their covid quarantine doing a basic Spanish course so they would be better able to work with those customers and coworkers when they came back.

    Our normal job duties can’t be done remotely. We can’t help customers in person, we can’t work with the on-site devices and materials, etc. If we’re working from home, our normal job duties have to be covered by somebody else. But those duties would have to be covered if we took sick leave as well. And offering a limited number of modified-duty WFH days to all employees is going to be less of loss for the company than increased sick leave.

    It’s a nice perk to acknowledge the inherent unfairness and it’s not like an employee spending a day doing optional trainings or reading over their whole process manual and making notes on possible updates or whatever is completely wasting the company’s time.

    1. Abigail*

      I think “absolutely accommodate a few WFH days per year” is inaccurate for a lot of people.

      I think this space tends to wear blinders on the legitimate business need to be in person some of the time. It’s not always a big bad boss. Sometimes it is an actual, legitimate need.

      1. commensally*

        Absolutely accommodate a few WFH days per year is very different from never need to be in person? I work at one of those “can’t WFH” jobs. I was in person at the office when literally all the other staff was WFH. I know that many, many jobs can’t be done from home.

        However, I firmly believe that any manager can make it possible for any valued staff member to work from home once or twice a year, and I know this from experience because my employer does it for literally everyone (yes, even the people who drive the trucks.) They do this the same way they make it possible for any staff member to take a day a few times a year for a training day or a conference (yes, even the receptionist) by acknowledging that there are ways they can work once or twice a year that aren’t their core job duties.

        1. Abigail*

          Finding, delegating, and supervising these tasks sounds like more work than it’s worth.

          I believe it works for you. It’s not a universal suggestion.

        2. metadata minion*

          In this situation, I’m not sure why this is better than just giving the person a couple more PTO days.

      1. commensally*

        Again: Those people can organize their email or other paperwork, document processes, do online trainings, take on one of those small projects like reworking the fire drill instructions that every workplace kind of could use done but is never high priority.

        They can’t do their ordinary duties. They couldn’t work from home regularly. But if you’re saying there’s absolutely no task a housecleaner could spend eight hours on every six months that would be beneficial to the business that doesn’t involve actively scrubbing toilets, then you’re seriously devaluing all the small bits of background work your housecleaners do every day that doesn’t involve scrubbing toilets, or you’re refusing to admit that a housecleaner is just as capable of doing small non-scrubbing tasks related to their job as anyone else.

        I guarantee you there’s a training your housecleaners could do that would make them much better housecleaners. (Our custodian spent covid work from home days taking video courses on cleaning for a pandemic and was much more effective when she got back!)

        1. spiriferida*

          There are parts of almost every job that could, if scheduled in the right way, be done remotely, yes. That doesn’t mean that any person’s work can be set up to accommodate work from home on a day when they’re unexpectedly feeling not up to coming in but still alert enough to accomplish some tasks.

          Being able to check email requires access to company email offsite, which not everyone has. Same with filling out paperwork. Third for training – if there’s general training that they don’t have to complete on a pre-arranged schedule, which isn’t a guarantee (all of my trainings, for example, are pre-scheduled with a third party company). Furthermore, it’s appropriate to say that there are some jobs who cannot regularly accommodate WFH because the bulk of the responsibilities for which they’re hired are for in-person work, even if they can make do during an emergency situation, or can find other tasks for employees to accomplish in a pinch.

          1. commensally*

            That’s absolutely true, and part of the shift our employer did when they started this policy was to do the background work that was needed – making sure every employee who has email can access it and our intranet from home if they want to, having a list of approved but optional trainings available through that intranet (which did mean having a list of approved trainings, some of them free online, that weren’t necessarily through our usual vendors), etc.

            Employees who wanted the option of WFH sick leave had to fill out the same paperwork to make that possible as any other employee using WFH, including making sure they had the home setup necessary to securely and reliably access those things – a lot of employees who were only going to be able to use it in rare situations never bothered. But if you have the ability to set that up things like offline email access for your Group B employees, you can also do it for your Group A employees.

            If your workplace doesn’t have any work from home people – if you’re a landscaping company run out of the back of a truck where everyone shovels dirt on a daily basis and nobody has a company email, or a dental practice where everyone interacts with customers and all data stays onsite, it may not be possible to offer work from home to most of your employees without an unreasonable amount of disruption. My workplace didn’t offer WFH for anyone until Covid happened and they were forced to do all of that work. But that isn’t going to be a situation like LW’s where half the staff are already doing WFH; you’ve got the basic setup worked out.

            I agree fully with your last sentence – there are a lot of jobs where employees can’t regularly work from home, and for them it needs to be something employed rarely and in a pinch. Group A employees likely can’t use it nearly as often or as casually as Group B employees, but making the effort to acknowledge it as an option is worth it, especially when your Group A employees are already feeling like they’re second-class (which is almost always already the case in a workplace where there’s a split like this.)

            1. spiriferida*

              I mean, I think it’s telling that your examples (learning Spanish, pandemic cleaning training) have to do with the extreme circumstances of full or partial pandemic lockdown.

              Similarly, I think that there are plenty of jobs where, while there may be a half- or even whole day’s worth of administrative tasks that could theoretically be accomplished on a work from home day, that doesn’t mean it makes sense for all those tasks to be left to sit for that one day – it would be anywhere from inefficient to actively negligent to let them wait that long.

            2. Nancy*

              Or you can just give more actual sick leave rather than trying to come up with random tasks for your janitorial staff to fill their time and setting them up with company VPN or whatever.
              Some jobs cannot be WFH and that is ok.

        2. Abigail*

          “Reworking the fire drill instructions” is a leap.

          I think you are really committed to this and are simply unable to see any other opinion as valid.

        3. Limmy*

          But a cleaner wouldn’t get paid for any of that.

          Sure, they could invent needless busy work if they really wanted to (any decent cleaner will already have a website and all their “training” or whatever up to date) but most cleaners don’t want to waste time on fake busy work that they’re not getting paid for.

        4. Limmy*

          But they wouldn’t get paid for that.

          Why would a cleaner want to invent unnecessary busy work that they’re not getting paid for?

        5. metadata minion*

          Many house cleaners work independently or in a small team that doesn’t get paid unless they’re cleaning houses. It could make sense to arrange 1 or 2 paid training days for the facilities staff at a company, but there’s nobody to pay a self-employed cleaner to stay home and update their website (if they even have one).

    3. SB*

      Eh, I used to work in a laboratory. The notebooks/logs couldn’t be brought home (confidential) and the obviously the testing had to be on-site. There was maybe enough for one person to have 1-2 hours of work that could be done from home….but it’s not something we could put off until someone needed it.

      1. commensally*

        Right, but you can reclassify “this person needs WFH tasks” as somebody needing it, if that’s something your management thinks is worthwhile. (And then those jobs are already done when they’re needed, which improves overall efficiency.) It does require a rethinking about what WFH is going to mean. But it can be a really good accommodation to allow it once in awhile, especially in a situation where unbalanced WFH is creating resentment.

        If everything in your job is confidential, then it’s obviously a different situation, but in that situation it doesn’t seem like your Group B people should be doing work from home as sick leave either. (And even then there’s probably third-party trainings of some kind you could do from home – and if your job never allows people to do staff development on work time, even the housekeepers, that’s another problem.)

        1. amoeba*

          Or…. you just give people enough sick days so that they can just rest and not come in when they’re sick?

          I mean, I agree it makes sense to come up with things like that for something like a lockdown! Or less dramatically, we’ll have a shutdown of our lab building next week and we’re certainly not asking the people working in the labs to take two days of PTO for that. So they’ll find something to do from home, sure. But when they’re sick? Why on earth would they *want* to do busy work then instead of just… more sick leave?

      2. Limmy*

        Right now I am fully remote, but I used to work as on-gallery staff in one of the world’s busiest museum, delivering activities to schools groups.

        There’s absolutely no way I could do any of that job from home as requirement was to be fully updated with ALL training, learning, protocol, etc. I wasn’t involved in any of the organising or planning side, just delivery, so no space to tinker with the format or do any planning work at home.

        There’s literally no way that job could be done from home even for one day.

    4. Filofaxes*

      …grocery store bagger? Grocery store clerk? Hospital pharmacist? Garbage collector? Nurse doing bedside nursing in a hospital?

      I mean, I also don’t think you’ve thought this through or that you maybe think that like, all house cleaners are part of a *company* or something.

  38. Another Kristin*

    This is OT but I remember when they stopped paying out accrued sick days for teachers in my province. It was framed as one of those “look at the big payouts these lazy teachers are getting!” Then the teachers started USING their sick days – pretty reasonable if you ask me, children being walking germ factories and all – and there was a big stink about this too! You just can’t win with some people.

    Anyway, it sounds like this is a small organization, so I don’t get why you’re tying yourselves to rigid rules, rather than give everyone unlimited sick time. Sure, someone could potentially abuse it, but if you’re an organization of like 30 people that’s a lot easier to handle as a management challenge than it would be in a place with a headcount of 10,000. If Team A and Team B have the same amount of sick leave, but that amount is effectively “as much as you need”, then that seems to solve your problem.

  39. Parenthesis Guy*

    Query: Do people in Group B end up working more than 40 hours a week? People in Group A can only work in the office with clients doing customer facing tasks. Seems tough to do that beyond core hours. People in Group B, however, seem like they can work wherever and whenever. Seems like it’s possible for them to work longer.

    Even still, I would still question whether you want to penalize the WFH people. If they can do the jobs of Group A and B, seems like they’re more valuable than those people that can only do A.

  40. Vipsania Agrippina*

    I suggest that you install HEPA filters in your office if you can. With cleaner air, less people will become sick if someone is contagious, or long term by other pollutants.

  41. alldogsarepuppies*

    I miss read the title thinking the Group B was made that Group A got more sick time, and thought “that’s actually brilliant to compensate people that have to come in differently”. That’s how logical it is to me that there is a clear solution.

  42. Msd*

    Don’t pay out sick time but I don’t agree with unlimited sick time. As a manager I have found that even with a set number of sick days some employees think of them more like personal or vacation days. It is pretty hard to address the issue with someone who abuses sick days unless they have a pattern like Fridays/Mondays. Even then, though, you can’t really challenge them. And I’m sorry but there are employees that abuse sick time.

    1. metadata minion*

      From the perspective of your business needs, if it’s ok for someone to take the time off if they’re “really” sick, why is it any more disruptive for them to take time off for some other reason?

  43. Raida*

    I really don’t agree with paying out sick days.
    That is for ensuring staff are paid when they can’t work.
    That is what it’s for.

    Holidays? Sure! Accrued? Absolutely!

    but Sick? That’s an incentive to *not* use this thing that’s designed to protect staff health.

    Sick is just… total compensation package. It’s trying to ensure the annual salary is provided even when staff need some days off.
    It’s not “I was sick, stayed home 3 days. So this week I made 8xDays wages because sick leave is extra!”

    1. Boof*

      I’d hesitate to say sick is “total compensation package” because then it starts looking like something you “should” use a certain amount of… I’d say it’s more just “cost of doing business” – things happen, people get sick, machines break, supplies are delayed, whatever. Business needs to account that nothing works 100% on schedule exactly the same all the time, not even machines! But I also don’t think employers ought to be a society safety net; if someone is out enough that their overall work seriously suffers, I don’t think it makes sense to expect employers to treat them the same (pay, hours, projects, continued employment, whatever metrics tend to come up) as someone who has much higher/more consistent output.
      … I know no one’s really advocating for the latter in this particular thread but I wince when I see ones where someone is chronically absent + under performing for months or even years and either no plan to address it or asking “should I address it” and well… yes. But it’s not about their health status or sick time, it’s about their overall work output and whether or not they’re a match for the employer’s needs.

  44. Jill Swinburne*

    Why have such a complicated policy that leaves the door so open for disgruntlement? Place I used to work (long pre-covid) made it very simple: technically unlimited sick days so don’t spread your germs thanks, three days off in a row and they can ask for a doctor’s note, and there is monitoring so don’t be calling out regularly on Mondays and Fridays. Holiday pay got paid out when you left as per our laws but you didn’t accrue sick leave. As far as I’m aware it wasn’t abused.

  45. StrangeHorse*

    I find all this talk of how many days of sick leave people get and using them up/bonuses for not using them bizarre. I don’t live/work in the US and here, if you’re sick, you take sick days. (Of course, there are still individuals who insist on working when sick or checking their emails etc.)

    I had no idea if there was a limit on how many sick days I could take so I checked and we get 30 days paid by the employer at 100% and after that, it’s paid by the state/health insurance at 60% (everyone has health insurance and it costs around 50-180 euros per year). It seems so weird to me to treat being sick as a holiday or something where you have a limited amount. If you’re sick, you’re sick.

    1. Broadway Duchess*

      Right and US workers know that other countries have more worker-friendly time off policies, but this is never helpful.

      The OP is looking for actionable advice on her problem, not another refrain of “US Policies Are Bizarre” in the key of G.

  46. here to help*

    Awesome solutions to a real problem I’m seeing more and more. Being able to work remotely grants a benefit of flexibility, and those with roles that cannot be performed remotely should be granted benefits of equal worth.

  47. Kt*

    “ we all truly prefer to work on-site due to the collaborative nature of our work”
    Paired with
    “Everyone wears multiple hats”
    Stay away from this place!!!

  48. DJ*

    I’d be inclined to scrap paying out unused sick leave to a departing employee and instead out that $$ into additional sick leave (could be an additional pool for all to access when leave runs you) or another type of leave.
    I work mainly remotely and hardly take any sick leave due to what LW outlines. But with the to get us in the office more a policy will be you can’t call in sick and WFH. Eg a virus or headache that’s less severe in the day with meds but prevents commuting. Then we come back to a backlog of work. The other thing is we take away a medical appt from someone else who needs it just to get a medical certificate!

  49. Despachito*

    The situation clearly needs remedying but I side-eye a bit Group A bullying Group B into nonsensical arrangements (taking up sick days when they are fully capable to work from home and their work is piling up just to appease Group A).

    I think the solution would be as said – add some sick days to Group A, or even better, give them unlimited sick time, non-refundable, on as-needs basis. Stop paying out accumulated sick time on leave (that’s really weird).

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