Creating a Sick Day Policy for your VA Business

Hey Y’all!

Each month I want to share with you one aspect of my business that I am working to improve. This can be a boundary I need to strengthen, or a policy I need to put in place, or a change I need to make to my schedule in order to have the business I truly want. I hope you’ll find my sharing insightful and that it will inspire you to take a look at this topic for your own VA business and see if there is anything you could improve on, too.

This month’s topic: Creating a Sick Day Policy for your VA Business

And I’m starting out with a confession for you on why this is this month’s topic:

Because I spent the first two weeks of January really sick.

And one of the things I have always struggled with in my Virtual Assistance business, even after 10 years, is taking a sick day when I am feeling unwell.

If I wake up feeling sick, my first instinct isn’t to let my clients know I’m taking the day off to take medicine and rest until I feel better.

Nope.

My first instinct is to figure out how to get all my work done while feeling like crap.

So I work instead of taking the time off to rest and get better, and I push and push to get my work done so I don’t disappoint my clients.

I find time and time again that all this hustling while I’m sick means I probably stay sick longer than I would have if I had taken the day off to rest.

And often times I also get mad {at myself} that I have set up my business in such a way that I feel I can’t even take a day off when I’m sick.

Is this my client’s fault for making me feel this way?

Heck no!

It’s mine…

Because I didn’t have a policy in place for my business on how to handle sick days.

Well, no more my friends...

From today forward, I have a sick day policy in place!

And by policy, I don’t necessarily mean a big formal written down statement in a manual somewhere or a policy I pass out to my clients.

I mean a policy for myself that I will adhere to when I am sick from here forward.

My Sick Day Policy looks like this:

• If I’m too sick to work, I will notify my clients via email that I will be out for the day and I anticipate being back online by X date. Usually when I get sick, it’s something simple like a cold or a sinus infection. So I can very easily anticipate when I will be back in working mode. If I am not sure when I will be back online, I will let my clients know that as well so they can make plans if I think my absence will be extended.

• I will cancel all calls for the day that I am sick but will wait to reschedule them when I am feeling better. The reason I will wait to reschedule calls when I am better and not when I cancel them is so that I don’t reschedule for the next day when I might still be sick. The only thing worse than rescheduling a call last minute is rescheduling a call last minute TWICE!

• I will turn off all email and slack notifications so that I can truly rest. (Second confession: this will be the hardest part for me as I hate being unavailable even when I’m sick. But I want to prioritize my health, and the work can wait.)

• When I am feeling better and healthy again, I will make a plan of action on how I will accomplish the work I was not able to do while I was off. It’s a good idea to make a list of what all needs to get accomplished, and start with the tasks that are most urgent and work your way down the list from there.

• I will update my clients on when I anticipate completing the past due tasks so that they are looped in on when things will be completed. {This can easily be done in Asana but I think it’s nice to send an email too}

I am sure there are other things I am not thinking about or including on this list…

So I’d love to hear from you!

What is something I should include in my Sick Day Policy that I haven’t thought of yet?

And what does YOUR sick day policy look like?

I’d love to know… Chime in with a comment and let me know!