Absenteeism at work remains a 'significant' cost burden

England may be out of the World Cup, but when the team played Argentina, it was estimated that absenteeism at work cost the English economy £1.3 billion.

Yet according to a report in the latest edition of First Trust Bank’s Economic Outlook and Business Review (EOBR), absenteeism is not just a problem faced by employers once every four years.

Writing in the current edition of the EOBR, Jenny Irwin of KPMG Consulting says that one third of absences from work do not relate to ill health and are a ‘significant’ cost burden to businesses.

“Last year the CBI calculated that the average direct cost to employers was approximately £434 per employee, a cost to UK businesses of £10.7 billion,” Ms Irwin said.

The average number of days lost per employee ranges from 7.8 to 8.7 days a year, but these figures vary across business sectors and employees. For example, absence is lowest among professional services and smaller organisations.

“Typically, absence rates are higher in the public sector than the private sector,” Ms Irwin explained. “Although employers recognise absenteeism as a significant cost burden, less then half of UK employers, surveyed by the CBI, monitor absence related costs.”

On average Northern Ireland businesses lose 4.9% of working time per year for manual workers and 2.8% for non-manual workers.

“Manual time lost here actually represents the second highest regional percentage in the UK after Greater London,” Ms Irwin said.

In contrast Pat Delaney, Director of the Small Firms Association, commenting on absenteeism in the Republic, said that during Ireland’s World Cup matches absenteeism had been less than half of a percent of the workforce which he said was a “huge victory for pragmatism.”

The report on absenteeism is just one of a series of in-depth reports, economic analysis and reviews by leading commentators and businesspeople contained in the June edition of the First Trust Bank’s Economic Outlook and Business Review.

(SP)