Nearly three quarters of Brits go to work despite feeling so ill they could legitimately stay at home, a survey of Britain’s working wounded has revealed.

The survey by AXA PPP healthcare indicates that, in the past six months alone, two thirds of working people have gone to work when they would have been well within their rights to stay at home. And during this time more than half (53 per cent) of respondents have not taken a single day off sick.

So why are we dragging ourselves into work when we’re so unwell?

In the main it’s for positive reasons, with 29 per cent of people saying they don’t want to let down their colleagues.

But there are some negative reasons, more based on fear – 24 per cent say they just have too much work to do and 15 per cent are worried their sick leave records could be used against them if their employer comes to making people redundant.

One in five people even say that they’ve used up some of their annual leave entitlement to cover up for having to take time off sick – of these, 32 per cent said they’d done this because they didn’t get paid for sick days, while 26 per cent said they were scared their sick leave record could be used against them if their employer comes to making people redundant.

Dudley Lusted, of AXA PPP healthcare, said: “Sickness absence is very often due to minor, self-limiting illnesses and, as this survey shows, most employees continue to turn up for work when they’re feeling under the weather.

“And, if they do have to take time off, they can be trusted to come back as soon as they feel well enough to work again.

“It’s wrong to subject hard working people to over zealous absence management methods such as having to report in sick to an occupational nurse ‘helpline’ or even be subjected to a lie detector test!

The AXA PPP survey examined levels of sickness presence by profession, with some interesting variations. Nearly nine in 10 people who work in marketing, advertising and PR, or in sales solider on even when they could have stayed at home.

Likewise, 72 per cent of those working in media and creative industries kept going when they could have legitimately stayed home.

Those in the charity sector are the least likely to go to work if they are feeling unwell, with 48 per cent having never done this, followed by 46 per cent of graduate and trainee employees and 44 per cent of those working in electronics.