Case studies and reports

Workplace Stress and the Law

Employers can apply sick pay policy to disabled employees

Smoking ban

Staff absence cost UK £13bn in 2005

Sickness Absence costs employers £12.2 billion in 2004

Sickness Absence costs employers £12.2 billion in 2004

Increasingly complex employment legislation, the threat of personal injury litigation (including work-related stress claims) and the escalating cost of employers' liability insurance are all pushing attendance management, employee wellbeing, rehabilitation and a strong safety culture to the top of the HR agenda.

Without a doubt, maximising attendance of employees has become a key performance indicator. Simultaneously, employers are grappling with increasingly complex employment legislation. From 1 October 2004, the cost of making basic procedural mistakes in employment disputes may increase by as much as 50%.

Many employers are also finding it difficult to manage employees on long-term ill-health absence against the backdrop of disability discrimination legislation. There is also the ever-present threat of personal injury litigation including work-related stress claims. With this comes the escalating cost of employer's liability insurance. There is also a significant gap between some employers' practices and what is required to minimise the threat of work-related personal injury cases, particularly stress induced ones.

Generally speaking, the longer an employee is off work, the less likely he or she is to return to work. Leaving aside the misery this implies for individuals, this represents a significant loss to companies in skills training, experience and wasted recruitment costs. For those companies running occupational pension schemes, these figures translate into possibly avoidable ill-health early retirements which add to the financial burden of these schemes.

The CBI in its 2002/3 survey of absence and labour turnover found that in 2002, 6.8 days were lost on average per employee which, it says, is the equivalent of 2.9% of total working time. For manual workers, this average rises to 8.4 days or 3.7% of total working time. Projecting these figures across the UK workforce, the CBI estimates that over 166 million working days were lost in 2002 due to absence at a direct cost of more than £11bn. This rose to £12.2 billion in 2004.

* Reference CBI report www.cbi.org.uk