When Rachel* got Covid, her employer expected her to carry on working remotely rather than take a sick day. “I was very, very tired,” she says. “[It] was very difficult to focus.” The special needs teacher based in the south-east of England delivered her lessons from home to pupils in the classroom, helped by a teaching assistant. “You felt that if you didn’t do it, you were letting people down.” Her difficulties were compounded by the weak school internet connection and some challenging behaviour from students.
It was a stark example of the way tools introduced in the pandemic to help isolating students and teachers have transformed working life. Zoom calls, email and Slack channels have facilitated work during lockdowns and made it easy for employees to stay at home if they had Covid, but they have also made it harder to take sick days.
Elizabeth Rimmer, the chief executive of LawCare, a charity that supports good mental health in the legal community, has joined numerous webinars and virtual meetings in recent weeks attended by people struggling on with Covid. “They didn’t look good. [People] can lie in bed with their laptop and power through even if they are unwell.” Jane van Zyl, chief executive of Working Families, an advocacy group, says: “We have to be mindful that the lesson from the pandemic is flexible working, and not working round the clock.”