Short-term 'sickies' wipe out 21 million working days

The findings, resulting from the latest CBI-AXA survey, revealed that long-term absence of 20 days or more accounts for 43% of all working time lost, costing £5.8bn. In the public sector, just over half of absence (52%) is long term, while in the private sector this was more than a third (38%). Short-term absences are a key concern. The great majority of absences are genuine, but employers believe around 12% are suspect and involve staff ‘pulling a sickie’. That means 21 million days were lost unnecessarily in 2006 at a cost to the economy £1.6bn. Asked to cite the reasons behind fake illness claims, 70% of employers felt staff are inclined to create unauthorised long weekends by taking Mondays or Fridays off sick, while 68% said there is a link between sickies and holidays, and 39% said absence is linked to special events, such as major sporting tournaments. Looking at all absences, the 2006 research shows an increase on 2005, when the average employee took 6.6 days off sick, and the total number of days lost was 164 million. In 2006, absence cost £537 per employee and accounted for 3.3 per cent of working time. According to Susan Anderson, CBI director of human resources policy, “some people think they have a right to use 'sickies' to take long weekends or extend holidays as they please. Unauthorised absence puts colleagues under unfair pressure, and loses employers and taxpayers well over a billion pounds”. Everybody gets sick and employers understand most absence is genuine, she added. "But there is a culture of absenteeism in some workplace that must be addressed. The gap between organisations with the highest and lowest absences is over nine days, and clearly some are managing absence better than others. In particular, if the public sector could match average private sector absence levels, then the taxpayer would save £1.1bn a year - enough to build seven new general hospitals. "Some degree of short-term absence is inevitable, but there is a lot that employers can do to manage it. The best organisations use a carrot and stick approach to reward good attendees and tackle the worst offenders." The absence level gap between manual and non-manual workers has continued to narrow - to averages of eight days and 6.2 days respectively - and is entirely due to progress in reducing absence among manual workers. The survey also shows that companies offering rehabilitation programmes and flexible working can help employees back to work and lose less time to absence.