Sickness absence statistics

Patterns of absence can be a clue to identifying health problems but are also used by employers to benchmark sickness levels for potentially more punitive reasons.

Surveys from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) and the government’s Office for National Statistics (ONS) provide an overview. More sector-specific figures are published by a variety of bodies including the Engineering Employers’ Federation (EEF), the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIS) covering the NHS, the civil service and the Local Government Association (LGA) about English local authorities.

But these studies and surveys are not necessarily comparable with each other, nor with figures generated by individual employers.