📉 The Dual Threat: Absence at 15-Year High & Rising Presenteeism 📈
- Lansbury HR
- Oct 17
- 2 min read
What’s it all about?
The health of the workforce is facing a severe challenge, manifesting as a dual crisis of high sickness and unmanaged pressure.
What happened?
Recent data confirms that sickness absence rates have surged to a 15-year high. Compounding this is the rising problem of presenteeism—the act of employees working while unwell—which is particularly difficult to detect and manage within hybrid and remote working models. This trend suggests that employees are either genuinely sicker or feel unable to take the time needed to recover.
What does this mean for you?
What this means for employers is a significant, direct hit to productivity and operational costs. High absence is an obvious financial strain, but rising presenteeism is a silent, equally damaging issue, leading to low-quality work, team friction, delayed recovery, and chronic burnout. Addressing this requires a strategic pivot: the focus must shift from simply managing sick days to implementing a holistic strategy that tackles the root, systemic causes of poor health, such as excessive workload demands and ineffective line management practices that foster a "work through it" culture.
Our Advice? HR must adopt a preventative, data-driven approach.
Action 1: Analyse and Segment Absence Data. Go beyond total days lost; segment your data to identify key trends (e.g., specific departments, long-term versus short-term, or mental health vs. physical illness).
Action 2: Invest in Occupational Health (OH). Ensure you have robust OH services available that can provide early intervention and support tailored to complex health issues.
Action 3: Empower Managers. Provide mandatory, practical training to managers on effective sickness absence management, including how to conduct supportive return-to-work interviews and identify signs of presenteeism in their teams.
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