The real cost of staff absences – National Sickie Day

Ever pulled a sickie?

It’s alright, there’s no shame here.

In fact, you’d actually be among the 56% of UK adults who did so last year.

That’s according to a new survey from Instaprint, as reported in Business Insider; the same source that forecasts there could be a whopping 3.6 million staff absences on the 6th of February.

But “..why then?” you ask.

Well, this particular Monday is National Sickie Day.

But what do these absences cost the employer? And, perhaps more importantly, could they be avoided in the first place?

Well grab a mug of something warm and get snuggled under your duvet, it’s time to take the temperature on “sickies”.

How much are staff absences costing employers?

According to XpertHR (as reported in People Management, sickness absence rates reached 3.1% in 2021; the highest it’s been since 2009.

This works out as an average of 7.3 sick days a year per employee at a cost of ￡781 each.

Sound like a lot? It is.

More so when the employer doesn’t measure the impact of its absences.

Research from Group Risk Development suggests that although 85% of employers record staff sickness, only 63% actually measure the impact on their business.

Unsurprising, really. Especially when there’s no one way to do it.

So how can you measure the impact of staff absences?

So although there’s no standard measure for the impact of absences, there are a few tried-and-tested metrics you can use. A good process includes a combination of:

• Tracking attendance records – this basic method can help identify patterns of absenteeism
• Measuring productivity – comparing the amount of work completed by staff members who are present to the amount completed by staff members who are absent.
• Assessing customer satisfaction – surveying customers to determine whether or not they’ve noticed a dip in service quality during periods of high staff absences.
• Calculating the cost of absenteeism – try estimating the cost of replacing absent staff members, including the cost of overtime pay, temporary staff and lost productivity.
• Running employee engagement surveys – these can measure everything from employee engagement levels to job satisfaction. Consequently, these findings may be able to help you understand any high periods of absence.

As good as this data is, though, it’s still just crunching the numbers. Without a layer of context and human emotion behind the figures, can data ever tell you the whole story?

It’s doubtful.

In fact, dig a little deeper and there’s a lot more than meets the eye when it comes to “pulling a sickie”.

~~~~

Check the whole blog post here to find out more about the “sickies”, the reasons behind them and what can you do to prevent them.

P.S. If you enjoyed this newsletter, follow the DigitalGrads page for more daily content just like this!