People will get sick. Here’s how to deal.

November can be lovely and cozy, but one thing I am not grateful for this Thanksgiving season is winter illnesses. Before becoming a parent, I had no idea how often people could get sick. The answer is a lot. The literature from my local children’s hospital cheerfully informs people that “it’s typical for a child to come down with respiratory and/or stomach bugs 6-8 times per year!” If you have 2 kids, that might be 12-16 episodes, and while many will overlap, they won’t all overlap. Whoever is caring for the kids will get these bugs too. Someone could be sick pretty much all the time.

This is obviously disruptive for everyone in a family. One of the reasons women wind up exiting the work force is the number of days kids in daycare get sick each year. It can become unmanageable. But illnesses aren’t just disruptive to the families that happens to be sick. Because I get to see how lots of different people spend their time, I can report that a great many meetings have been postponed because someone critical was home with a sick kid, or in bed with the flu. The timeline of a project gets stretched out, because someone is covering for someone else who is out sick, and so can’t work on something non-urgent. If people aren’t careful, the wheels of progress can grind to a stop until spring.

Alas, illness is inevitable, though there are ways to lessen the sting. In my family we put hand sanitizer everywhere — in the car, in people’s backpacks, in purses, at the door. It’s not perfect but at least some older studies suggest using sanitizer results in fewer sick days. Now is also a good time to remind everyone in your household about washing hands. A lot. It might be worth wearing masks in crowded places too (and getting a flu shot, and getting enough sleep, and all those good things!).

I loved the daycare where I sent my oldest many years ago, but one reason I wound up hiring a nanny is that I couldn’t deal with the uncertainty of so many sick days, and not knowing whether I’d have to cancel everything I had planned if my son woke up with a low-grade fever or a cough. Not wanting to be unreliable, I’d simply not plan stuff — which isn’t a good approach to building a business long term. While nannies can get sick too, hiring one resulted in a lot fewer sick days for our younger kids in their first few years of life. I definitely tell people starting families to consider this as they figure out childcare options.

Those are things you can do. It’s harder to affect what other people do. Even so, you can help keep everything on track by planning all projects with the reality of winter illnesses in mind.

If you have a 5-member team, the odds that someone will be out at least one day each week are high. Indeed, that’s only a 4 percent absence rate, and in the thick of cold and flu season, my guess is it will be higher than that. So make sure there are very few things that only one person knows how to do. Make sure that people can work from home if need be. Sometimes a person might be able to get a few hours of work done even if they are tending a 4-year-old who’s home with a fever. They’ll just be working with the drama of Sodor in the background but if they don’t have to take a full sick day, that’s a win.

You’ll also want to build in extra time. Let’s just say that November to February might not be the best time for the rush project that will require all hands on deck at all times. Because all hands won’t be on deck when norovirus rips through the office. When you build in some buffer, the worst case scenario is you get done early. But my guess is you’ll need the extra.

It also helps to have be understanding — and have a sense of humor. Since illness is inevitable, there’s no point getting mad at good people who happen to be out. It’s no fun being sick (or caring for a kid with a stomach bug when that kid isn’t yet potty trained). An A+ employee who’s doing a B- job for a few weeks over the winter will probably be an A+ employee again soon enough. Or maybe someone will invent a cure for winter illnesses. I mean probably not…but we can always hope.

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