How do you handle sick days for yourself as a business owner?

[Spicy Nug]

This is one of those things I ALWAYS struggle with. Because it’s just me and my husband when one of us gets sick the other can take over. But when both of us get sick we have to not do anything for the whole day.

What does everyone else do with their business when you get sick? Just looking for some ideas on how to handle it really.

 

[SilverClouds]

That's such a good thread and 0 replies... Come on guys, any suggestions? Or do we all just work our asses off while sick without sick leave?

 

[Spicy Nug]

That's such a good thread and 0 replies... Come on guys, any suggestions? Or do we all just work our asses off while sick without sick leave?

Thank you for bumping this! I forgot about it honestly!

I’d still love to see how others handle this.

 

[t2van]

Think it's obvious if you work for your self and you are sick you don't get paid. It's pretty simple.

I can't remember the last time I was so unwell I needed an extended time off work - I get having a day or day and half where you just can't face anything and you might need to sleep to recover or just get proper rest. But after that passes if you can sit and watch YouTube, surf the internet you can probably answer emails and do some kind of work to a degree.

That's the problem with working for you self. You can't really be sick or take time off, if you dont have staff you don't earn.


Now that's out of the way.

I don't think you can really "handle" it unless you do the following:

You can create things and put things in place as and when it does happen so if you need 1- 2 or more days you don't need to think about it.

- Pre create notices to place on the website.
- If you sell on marketplaces learn how to "pause" or "suspend orders" ahead of time
- Pre create any email auto reposnders, mass emails out to customers

You don't need to say you are sick it's easier to say:

Due to unforeseen medial emergency we are closed for 24-48hrs normal operations will resume in y hours or x days


That's about the only thing you can do really.

Least that way if you are totally run down or sick it's only 5-15min you need to face on a screen while you click everything and you can go and rest.

When dealing with customers or clients. They won't care no one tends to do lol, but at least you set things in place to make communication open and transparent so if they do have a hissy fit you can direct them to a notice or an email sent out, thats kind of on them a bit for not noticing then if you ask me - but still that's not an excuse.


IF you have staff it get's a little easier. However if you have a physical location and you don't trust any of them with a key to go in an open up them selfs you still need to get to that building and let them in or have some procedure in place where your partner or a friend you trust can do that for you.

Businesses don't get sick. The people running them do and that's the reality of it.

Plan for any and all eventuality and you will be alright.

 

[roydan]

I work anyways.

My wife was in a hospital for a week a few months ago, it was super hard because each of us does something different in the agency.
We worked on crisis mode, we didn't handle anything that wasn't urgent, but she had to work from there.

So, unless you have someone else that can take over for you, you got to do the job yourself.

We were never able to hire anyone we trusted enough to do client work, so we're stuck with it.