Annual costs of sickness absence for UK businesses reach £554 per employee, CIPD report finds

The annual costs of sickness absence for UK businesses is estimated at around £554 per employee, data published in the latest research report from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD ) has been able to suggest.

The eighteenth annual CIPD survey to explore issues of health, well-being and absence in UK workplaces has been produced in partnership with Simplyhealth. The survey was completed by 1,021 respondents in November 2017.

For most companies, a key HR accountability is taking the lead on establishing and overseeing their organisation's absence management policy. In terms of managing sickness absence, most spells of sick leave are for self-limiting conditions of short duration that are straightforward for line managers to deal with.

The big challenge comes when ill or injured employees have a health issue that means they will be absent from work for a lengthy period of time.

There is no one size fits all approach to managing mental health at work but HR professionals need to ensure they're including it as part of their wider sickness absence management policy. And, if employees do call in sick, encourage your line managers to take the time to ask them how they really are — it could make a difference.

Tensor Time and Attendance Systems can streamline sick leave monitoring and management

Tensor plc supplies an extensive range of solutions designed specifically to help employers thoroughly monitor and manage absence, with our flagship WinTA.NET integrated workforce management solution incorporating a dedicated Absence Planning and Entitlement Management feature.

Our comprehensive, yet user-friendly software comes pre-loaded with graphical calendar charts that provide a colourful way of viewing an individual's or a department's absence records.

Each employee can be allocated different entitlements for absence such as annual leave or allowed sickness. As absence is booked and taken, the remainder available for each entitlement is updated. Entitlement formulae are used to calculate more complex entitlements calculated on a rising scale based upon length of service.

WinTA.NET supplies the relevant managers with information on employee's absences through warning email notifications or via hardcopy reports. After that, the system would rapidly identify missing employees that are expected to be at work and then informs you via automatic email reporting reports distributed by email.

If you'd like to find out more about the Tensor workforce management solutions, just contact our team or Book a Demo, we'll be more than happy to answer all of your questions and queries.