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Returning to the office can add new stressors for those who worked from home during the pandemic. In the thick of flu season, that includes sharing confined space with potentially sick co-workers who nevertheless feel required to come into the office.

Many companies, including Amazon, Disney, and Boeing, have enacted return-to-office mandates in the past year, and more continue to do so. Just last week, UPS told workers they will return to a five-day in-person schedule, the Wall Street Journal reported. And employees are complying. According to data from Kastle Systems, which monitors building-access card swipes in 2,600 buildings across 138 cities, office occupancy reached an average of 53 percent this month, the highest since the pandemic's start.

That's good news for CEOs looking to encourage people to commute, but not great for workplace wellness, especially as the risk of respiratory illness remains high, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In fact, public health officials recently expressed continued concern about Covid cases: More than half of the approximately 11,000 Covid-related deaths that occurred worldwide between mid-December 2023 and mid-January 2024 were in the U.S., Scientific American reports.

It may seem obvious that employees should stay home if they're sick -- but companies with strict RTO mandates aren't making that decision easy. In November, for example, Amazon told corporate employees that not coming into the office for at least a few days a week will impact their performance reviews and may hold them back professionally.

This kind of message may lead more employees to head into the office even if they're feeling ill, Alberta Johnson, founder and CEO of HR consulting firm People Experts, told the Wall Street Journal. "You really have to be unable to speak and unable to function to really make an excuse for yourself and say, 'I'm going to take a sick day.'"

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