Are kiwis taking more sickies?

The 2023 Workplace Wellness Report, a collaboration between Southern Cross Health Society and BusinessNZ, found a rising trend in staff using more of their sick leave entitlements.

The survey canvassed 137 organisations in the public and private sectors, who together employ a total of 135,742 people, 6.57% of all employees in New Zealand, about their employee absence data across 2022.

In July 2021 the statutory sick leave entitlement increased from five to ten days annually. Across 2022 employees took an average of 5.5 days off. This increased from the 4.2 to 4.7 days recorded between 2012 and 2020. It should be noted that 2020’s average of 4.2 days was the lowest, when lockdowns, social distancing and a nationwide focus on staying home when sick had a significant impact on results.  

Extrapolating figures from the survey to the national workforce, it translates to 10 million working days lost due to employee absence in 2022, up significantly from 2021’s 7.3 million estimate. Across the economy this equates to around $2.86 billion in absence costs.

The report cited the ongoing influence of Covid-19 and the encouragement to stay home when ill as one of the factors influencing 2022’s increased absence results. They found 2022’s mean result for the degree staff typically turned up for work with some form of illness when they should have stayed home was less than in 2018, 2016, 2014, and 2012 and an exact match for 2020. This bodes well that employees are putting more emphasis on taking care of themselves and limiting the spread of illness. The report also found that the proportion of enterprises who thought the culture of their business encouraged employees to stay home when ill has improved markedly since Covid-19 arrived, throughout all sizes of businesses.

However, they also note that ‘paid sickness absence days being viewed as an entitlement by those suspected to be not actually sick’ as risen up the ranking of main drivers of absence to reach number 7.

Anecdotally, people have been experiencing more sickness since lockdowns ceased than in years previous. Could this be part to blame for the increase in absences? Or is it simply that one of the lingering effects of living through a pandemic is a reluctance to come in to work when sick, when in the past employees would have just soldiered on?