Staff taking more sick leave, increasing cost to economy by $1b - survey
www.rnz.co.nz
Employers are facing increasing costs for covering worker absences as employees take more time off due to illness.

A biennial workplace wellness survey by Southern Cross Health Society and BusinessNZ showed the average rate of absence was 5.5 days per employee over the course of 2022.

It compared to a range of 4.2 and 4.7 days between 2012 and 2020, and was the highest on record since the survey began in 2012.

…

Southern Cross chief executive Nick Astwick said Covid and the then mandatory seven-day isolation was a factor in the higher absences.

“But we also believe as we’ve moved the minimum leave entitlement from five days to 10 days, that’s also contributed to an increase of leave,” Astwick said.

“Some of the workforce - we don’t know how much - but some of the workforce see the 10 days as an entitlement and so we were expecting to see an increase, and we have,” Astwick said.

Though another thing to consider is that, at least in my jobs, when the 5 days were exhausted, you just ate annual leave days when you were sick - or you just brought the bug into the office.

So the change could be reflecting that 5 days was actually not enough (especially with young children who bring home minor illnesses frequently). The increase in average rates seems quite small given the doubling of the allowance.

There will be abuse, I’m not denying it, but allowing us to use sick-leave instead of annual leave so that we can actually get recreational time off seems a fair enough change.

  • TagMeInSkipIGotThis
    4·
    10 months ago

    This just strikes me that HR & management probably focus on days sick leave taken because its an easy thing to count rather than somehow trying to account for mid & long-term productivity across a period which is difficult to measure.

    But also, the average between 2012-2020 was over a period where there was no global pandemic happening. People might want to pretend that in 2022 covid was over, but that’s just wishful retrospective thinking, it still happening, and even if folks don’t have to isolate now if you’re too sick to work, you’re too sick to work.

    • deadbeef79000
      3·
      10 months ago

      True, if something can easily be measured it will become a goal to minimise/maximize.

      Regardless of its actual usefulness.

      And it’s easy to spin sick days as “the government forcing employers to allow employees to steal time from the employer”.

      The absurdity is calling it “lost” productivity. If I got to work sick and infect two others who become incapable of working. Thats doubled the cost and was a preventable productivity loss. If it was, say, COVID, and those two others died then what’s the productivity loss?

      Penny-wise pound-foolish thinking.

      Any business that fails because they get 240 days/year rather than 250 days/year from employees deserves to fail.