Sickness Absence
How much is it costing your business? The average SME looses around £500 in direct costs for every worker employed due to sickness absence (CBI 2005). Estimates in 2010 were closer to £700, and in 2019 it was estimated that sickness absence costs UK businesses around £80 billion a year in lost productivity.
Unfortunately, due to the Covid-19 pandemic we forecast that sickness absence will become one of the major challanges in 2020 and beyond. Accordingly, the need to get individuals back to meaningful work is vital for their wellbeing and that of the UK economy.
The major causes of sickness absence are stress related mental health and musculoskeletal disorders (MSD). Many of these workers can return to work and would benefit from being at work. We specialise in interventions that negotiate obstacles to recovery and barriers to return to work in order to prevent long-term sickness absence. If you have company health insurance we can add value by facilitating that process.
We can assess the cost to your business, should you not already know, working with your management or HR department using quantifiable methods such as Bradford Scoring. We can then assess individual cases. This may be as simple as a brief review of documentation, a clinical consultation with the employee, or possibly a case conference involving the line manager, employee and possibly a union representative. In all cases we feel comfortable in advising you appropriately.
We provide management with a clear indication regarding an employee's return to work, with timeframes. We can recommend practicable and reasonable adjustments which facilitate a return to work, or advise on the need to consider alternatives to a return to work e.g. ill health retirement or dismissal.
We are familiar with consent issues and can liaise with your employee’s GP and other health care professionals, whilst still providing information to management upon which they can make decisions without compromising employee confidentiality.
