Soldier on no more: Will coronavirus mark the end of our puritan work culture?

2020 has seen a cough in a silent office evolve from a slight annoyance to a mark of the plague, Juliana Piskorz asks whether our illness martyrdom will have to stop in a post-pandemic world

(Getty)

Everyone knows the people who come into the office when they are ill. They exist in every workplace – grown-up versions of the children sent to school with snotty noses, tissues pouring out of pockets or a green hue that indicates they’ve spent the night near a toilet.

They’re not in the minority: a 2017 study found that 70 per cent of British workers – the equivalent of 18 million people nationally – would go to work even if they felt ill, the primary reason being that they felt their employer valued company performance over their health. 

Given that long-term statutory sick pay is only £95 per week, perhaps that is a reflection of how seriously we, as a society, take support for those who need time off work for their physical health. But now that many workers have spent the best part of a year working from home to avoid getting unwell, or spreading illness to others, will we see a cultural shift? 

On Tuesday, the health secretary, Matt Hancock, told a select committee that he wants to see the end of the UK’s culture of “soldiering on”, which contributes to the spread of respiratory diseases that proliferate in offices throughout winter, putting vulnerable people at risk. 

He said: “Why, in Britain, do we think it’s acceptable to soldier on and go into work if you have flu symptoms or a runny nose, thus making your colleagues ill? I think that’s something that is going to have to change.

“We are peculiarly unusual, and outliers, in still going to work, it kind of being the culture that as long as you can get out of bed, you still should get into work. That should change.”

Hancock highlighted how measures taken to tackle the coronavirus have also had the secondary effect of creating a significant drop in respiratory and other communicable diseases, a benefit we should collectively resolve to retain – even when the pandemic is over.  

He even suggested that the mass testing capacity developed to track and trace the coronavirus should not be dissolved but remodelled to tackle such illnesses as flu and the common cold.  

“Having built this, we must hold on to it. And afterwards we must use it not just for coronavirus but everything,” he said. “I want to have a change in the British way of doing things, where if in doubt, get a test. It doesn’t just refer to coronavirus, but to any illness that you might have.

“In future, I hope, if you have flu-like symptoms, you should get a test for it, and find out what’s wrong with you, and if you need to stay at home to protect others, then you should.”

Sociological thought has suggested that this work ethic is more prevalent in the northern hemisphere and is a historical hangover from our ancestors, an idea first fully formulated by the German theorist Max Weber in his 1905 work The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, and backed up by research, including a 2011 study from Warwick University.

According to this view, 16th-century Protestant doctrines, including those of Calvinism and Lutheranism, reinforced the notion that diligence in one’s work pleases God and is a form of worship, and that the work ethic that emerged in this period may have helped to propel the economies of northern Europe over their southern neighbours.

However, in 2020 the religious inspiration behind our attitude to work has been largely forgotten and replaced by an often relentless cycle of target-hitting and acceptance of long, often unproductive working hours. Research from 2019 found that workers in the UK are putting in the longest hours in the EU, working an average of 42 hours a week, compared with 40 for other countries. 

There is some hope that change might be on the horizon. Organisations such as 4 Day Week advocate for a more agile working schedule, arguing that productivity remains the same with shorter hours and job satisfaction increases. A recent Talk Talk study found that 58 per cent of workers felt they had been more productive since working from home – a sentiment echoed by bosses. 

Calls for a change in working culture have long been bubbling away, but 2020 might give us the collective opportunity to strike while the iron is hot, and make the case for long-term changes to working environments. As studies show, what the change will require is a promise from the top to empower workers, both socially and financially, to take time off when they are unwell.

Whether this will happen is yet to be seen, but it could be revolutionary in protecting us all from illness, or even the pandemics of the future.