Research* from Group Risk Development (GRiD), the industry body for the group risk protection sector, shows that employers with over 250 employees are more likely to have a significant absence issue among staff.

According to HR decision makers:

• Companies with over 250 employees have the highest absence rates – averaging 7.5 days per year.
• Micro businesses with between 1-9 staff only see their staff take an average of 2.8 days absence per year.

Five per cent of HR decision makers also admitted to not recording or monitoring absence at all, although this is more prevalent amongst SMEs (6%) than those with over 250 employees (1%). This equates to nearly 300,000** businesses across the UK with no way of knowing how often staff are off sick, whether they have a legitimate reason for being off work or whether specific individuals take more sick leave than others.

Furthermore, 55% of large businesses believe they have a higher sickness absence rate than their industry average, with 25% of these putting this down to ineffective absence management. This begs the question why they aren’t doing more to prevent it.

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