Despite the fact that you may not have to pay the employee when they are off, there are other direct and indirect costs to the business when an employee is absent.
Tag Archives: cost of absence
CIPD Absence Survey 2016
On 2nd November 2016, CIPD published its 17th annual absence management survey results. For me, the interesting finding were not the headline figures of the report but that the sample size had nearly doubled, reaching 1091 respondents. For years, the group size has fluctuated both sides of the 600 mark. Continue reading
Employee Wellbeing is worth investing in!
Employee wellbeing is not just a nice company value but it can become an important factor in productivity. As Susan Silcox outlines in her report published by XpertHR, poor wellbeing has many detrimental consequences to the business. Continue reading
Autumn Statement and the Spending Review spell further commitment to reduce long-term absence
Tougher checks for disability benefits?
The Daily Mail wrote today, 25 November 2015, that George Osborne was expected to introduce new rules in awarding benefits to the long-term sick in his Autumn Statement. Today’s Spending Review does outline a vague plan of reforms Continue reading
XpertHR Absence Survey 2015 – Cost of absence still just guesswork
On 5th October, XpertHR published the findings from its Absence Survey 2015. Their survey respondents from 670 companies declared an average absence level of 2.8% or 6.5 days per employee per year. The CIPD annual absence survey normally reports absence figures using the median value to avoid the numbers being skewed by extremely high or low absence figures. To provide an easier comparison, XpertHR study shows a median of 2.5% (5.7 days). In 2015, CIPD reported a median absence level of 6.9 days per employee, up from 6.6 in 2014. In terms of cost of absence, XpertHR survey reports an average cost of absence of £561 per employee per year. This can be compared to CIPD’s median cost, which for 2015 is £554.
Truth or Myth? Absence doesn’t cost if the employer isn’t paying sick pay
Myth!
Despite the fact that you may not have to pay the employee when they are off, there are often unnoticed costs to the business when an employee is absent. Continue reading
The indirect cost of absence – infographic
Absence is a major cost to business but it can be hard to quantify just how much it costs. The total bill is partly made up of direct costs such as agency or overtime fees for replacement staff and sick pay, which are relatively easy to calculate. If you’d like to calculate your direct cost of absence, try our absence cost calculator.
The rest of absence costs are much harder to put a price tag on because they include things like staff and client retention, client satisfaction, penalties for missed SLAs, reduced productivity and, to a large extent, management time. We’ve analysed the time spent by an average manager of a team of 10 on absence-related tasks in this infographic. The results are staggering: an average manager spends 20 working days each year managing absence. 20 working days – or 1 calendar month – that could better be spent on more value-adding tasks if the absence level was lower.
CIPD Absence Management survey 2014
CIPD and Simplyhealth have published the results of their Absence Management survey 2014. This annual survey has been the key benchmark for absence management for 15 years. However, the number of respondents has remained between 500 and 700, which is a fairly small sample Continue reading
The Cost and Myths of Staff Absence
Last week our Managing Director, Malene Nielsen, was invited to speak about “the cost and myths of staff absence” at Jelf Employee Benefits’ 4th annual wellbeing event at the Museum of London. Continue reading
How to make HR a profitable business function
Consider this scenario: a company of 1000 employees with 8% absence level (equal to 18 days per employee per year). With little data to base management decisions on and no line management ownership, the absence problem was not being addressed. In some areas, the management teams routinely over-staffed in order to make up for the expected no-shows. Continue reading