Research by the British Heart Foundation (BHF) has revealed that 650,000 workers phone in sick every week, costing the UK economy an estimated £100bn per year.
Even when people are able to make it into work, the research indicates that ill health prevents many people from carrying out their full range of duties. Of the eight million people who report a health problem which lasts for more than a year, nearly half (44%) said that they couldn’t do their jobs properly.
The sector with the highest rate of absence is Public Administration and Defence (which includes public sector jobs), where around 51,000 people do not make it in to work in a typical week.
Lisa Roberts, Technical Director of the Occupational Health Division at Santia Consulting Ltd commented:
“With sickness absence imposing an estimated cost to the UK economy of £100 billion a year, it is clear that more must be done to prevent this drain on resources. Not only must businesses get a grip on their absence monitoring, but improvements must be made to general workplace health and wellbeing. Lower absence rates and improved productivity are achievable goals, but firms must first be willing to fully embrace and implement wellbeing and absence management programmes.”
Lisa Purcell, Project Manager for the BHP Health at Work programme, said:
“Sickness absence is a major concern for the health of our nation and costs businesses millions of pounds every year. But it doesn’t have to be like this. The risk of numerous health conditions reported by workers, including coronary heart disease, can be significantly cut with improvements to their lifestyle.”
