In Sickness and In Health

Creatives are often very motivated people...and if they aren't, they probably aren't the ones you want working for you anyway. One problem with such highly motivated people is that they tend to work when they shouldn't, like, when they're sick. It's bad for them, and it can be bad for your business.

Employees who are ill aren't going to be 100% focused on their work. That's dangerous for assembly line workers, acceptable for bureaucrats, and debilitating for Creatives. Get them to stay away from work, rest up and feel better, so you'll get their full capability rather than some diminished capacity.

Of course, coming into work doesn't just hurt them, it puts the rest of your team at risk too. It's bad enough to have one person down with the flu, you need to try to keep it from spreading.

And if you're in a field where your Creatives work directly with clients -- hairstyling, say, or perhaps interior design, or something where consultations are the norm -- then you need to avoid getting your clients sick. Nothing will turn them off to your firm faster than to come in, get sneezed on repeatedly, then suffer with symptoms during the black tie gala that was the whole reason for getting their hair done in the first place,

How do you keep motivated people from coming in and putting themselves and everyone else at greater risk? If you're in a field where they can work at home, the answer is obvious, and many creative fields do allow you to work remotely. The hairstylist we mentioned earlier, unfortunately, doesn't have that luxury.

The issue of sick leave is a tricky piece of that. Many employees prefer to use their sick leave as paid time off for other things, then come to work when they've got a minor illness. How do you overcome this? Consider not having sick leave. I work for a place where we don't have sick leave, we simply don't come to work if we're sick. We're not charged time off, we don't have to dig into our annual vacation if we're sick longer than the company policy says we're supposed to be, and we don't use sick days for non-illness activities because there are no sick days. You may think, "well, then my employees will just abuse that policy and take off a lot of days they don't need" but you'd be surprised. Remember, the good employees are the motivated ones who work too much rather than too little, and if you've got employees who would abuse this and avoid work, do you really want them on your team anyway? If it makes you feel better, add a little clause to the policy that says that anyone who does abuse the policy will be fired.

Illness in the workplace is a bad thing. Do what you can to limit the effects when people do get sick. You can't avoid it, of course, but you can minimize the disruption it causes and end up with the best work your Creatives have to offer.