Deciding if you should stay home with your cold or go to work

The cold season lasts through March and April

Deciding if you should stay home with your cold or go to work.

In the United States, more colds occur in fall and winter, but the numbers remain high until the end of April.

Winter is on its way out, but you can still get a cold in February, March or April. Then you have to ask yourself whether you should drag yourself into work even if you're feeling awful.

Some employers set policies to discourage coming to work with a cold. They offer a specified number of paid days off for any purpose, according to the Society for Human Resource Management.

Cold viruses survive for several hours on inanimate objects and on the skin, says The Wall Street Journal. Cleaning environmental surfaces with a virus-killing disinfectant might help prevent the spread of infection.

Epidemiologists at the University of Iowa recommend staying home for 24 hours after the fever and serious symptoms are gone.

Bosses in the workplace wrestle with the two-sided problem of how to get people to come into work when they're healthy and how to keep them away when they're not.

According to the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, more than two-thirds of all health-related productivity losses spring not just from sick people missing work, but also from employees with chronic or contagious ailments who show up and perform poorly.

How to call in sick

Most supervisors say they appreciate and respect a simple statement that an employee is too ill to work. If you give too many graphic details, try to sound sick with a fake cough, or say you have such a headache you can't think, it can bring suspicion that it's not the truth, according to experts at CareerBuilder, a hiring-consulting firm in Chicago.

If you think an absence will cause career damage, touch base with co-workers with work-related emails. If you'll miss a meeting, ask to participate via teleconference.

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