Have you noticed that a lot more of your staff seem to be off sick recently? It might be the odd day here and there for coughs and colds, or maybe you’re seeing more people off for longer chunks of time than you usually do. If so, you’re not the only one.
Yes, sickness and absenteeism rates have soared to the highest they’ve ever been in the last few months. And just in time for Christmas too! And even when employees are in the building, they might still be too sick to work. With that record-breaking figure in mind, we thought it would be a good time to review what high sickness rates really mean for your business, and if there are any preventative measures you can take.
Sickness is at an All-Time High
According to studies done by the CIPD, the average rate of employee absence due to sickness or ill health has gone up to 7.8 working days per year in the UK. Bearing in mind that the pandemic did some really interesting things to sickness and absence rates, this is still the highest absence rate due to sickness that the UK has ever seen (pre-pandemic), which was 5.8 days per year per employee in 2018.
That means that each employee is absent for around 3.4% of their working time each year! Interestingly, while the absence levels are still significantly higher in public sector jobs (they’re around 10.6 days per employee per year), when you drill down into the causes of sickness absences, the study found that:
- Minor illness (colds, stomach bugs etc) is the most common cause of short-term absence.
- Mental health, musculoskeletal injuries, acute medical conditions and stress are the most common causes of long-term absence.
- Covid-19 hasn’t gone away. It’s still the fourth main reason for short-term absence, and over 50% of employers now have employees who have, or are experiencing long-covid during the last 12 months.
All of this isn’t newsworthy in itself, but it’s come at a time when employers are under a lot of pressure and facing significant recruitment and retention issues.
What This Means for Business Owners
This is the big question, especially as business owners have to balance the needs of the business and the needs of the employee. Overall, the message is that businesses need to be investing more into employee well-being across the board if they want absenteeism to go down. This also means providing management with the appropriate support, training and resources to offer this care to their team members. Managers play a key role in supporting people’s health and wellbeing, and building on that function will ultimately result in lower rates of work-related sickness. Can’t do much about the common cold though, sorry!
That means doing a few of these things:
Understand workplace health: Having a good understanding of workplace health and wellbeing is just the first step. It’s more than having hand sanitisers on all the doors. It means understanding how stress impacts your workforce (and the influence management style has on this). It means regularly reviewing workloads and responsibilities so that no one is excessively or routinely overworked, and understanding your team better as people. It also means promoting healthy working habits, supporting mental health and making sure that your team know that the world will not end if they take a sick day when they really need it.
Tackle the stress problem: In fact, in that study we linked to above, 76% of businesses surveyed reported stress-related absences in their organisation. This was both short-term stress and medical issues caused by long-term stress in the workplace, making it the leading cause of long-term absences from the workplace. So if you want to reduce absenteeism in your business, you need to be tackling stress at the root cause. Management, workload, mental health or something else – understand where the stress is coming from and take action against it.
Manage ‘presenteeism’: Another big indicator of general employee health is the number of people who come to work rain or shine, even when they’re ill. You know the ones. They come in with their noses running, coughing and spluttering, sharing their germs with the office, often without being able to work efficiently because they’re too unwell. If you’re seeing this a lot, then you probably haven’t been doing enough to combat the ‘always on’ culture’, which can blur the boundaries between home and work and make it difficult for employees to switch off – especially if they work from home. Regular employee surveys will tell you how your employees are feeling, and ensure that management are setting a good example by not showing up to work sick themselves. It can also help to communicate your policies around sickness effectively, provide healthcare and wellness benefits, review workloads regularly and try to create a workplace culture of care. All of these things can significantly reduce both presenteeism and absenteeism, each of which have a negative impact on your business. If you’re struggling with high rates of staff sickness and don’t know where to turn, you can always contact vivoHR. We provide a complementary HR review, as well as working with you to understand what’s going wrong in your business and how to get it right. We can provide you with all the documents you need to manage staff sickness, as well as provide insight and advice to help reduce the number of people calling in sick for genuine (and not so genuine) reasons! For more information, or to get started, just contact one of the vivoHR team today.