What is the absenteeism rate?
If you want to know how healthy your company is, you should look at the absenteeism rate. Finding out the precise absenteeism rate, whether it’s for the whole company or just for a certain person, will help you design solutions. In this post, we will go over what the absenteeism rate is, how to figure it out using ISO standards, and provide some examples of both good and bad rates of absenteeism.
The percentage of employees who do not show up for work as expected because of illness or other unanticipated circumstances is known as the absenteeism rate. A person, a group, or the entire company can have their absence rate calculated. You may learn a lot about the health of the company from these figures.
Knowing what constitutes absence will help us make sense of the absenteeism rate. When you’re not physically present at your job, it’s considered an absence. Employees miss work for a variety of reasons, including but not limited to medical ailments, stress-related illnesses, the occasional “sickie” (a made-up sick day), and other causes. An example of this would be a mother who calls in sick to stay home with her ill child. The absence rate does not account for holidays or tardiness.
Absenteeism is a detrimental work practice, similar to employee turnover. While some absenteeism is par for the course in every company, chronically high absenteeism is a red flag.
How can one determine the rate of absenteeism?
You will require data on employee absences in order to determine the absenteeism rate. For this absence data to be useful, it is essential that it includes not only the dates of absence but also the total number of days that an individual or group was absent. You should also have the amount of workdays available for a specific time frame.
One way to calculate the absence rate is by using the following formula, which comes from the ISO:
The absenteeism rate is calculated by dividing the total number of workdays missed by the total number of workdays observed over a specific time frame.
You can use this absenteeism rate for any period of time.
We will review the absenteeism formula step by step. The total number of days missed is required first. These are the days when a worker didn’t show up for work at all. The Human Resources Information System (HIS) of most companies will have these, along with an absence tally.
After that, we require the quantity of available workdays within a certain time frame. The absence rate does not include official holidays, therefore this varies by country and year. Because, after all, if you weren’t working, there’s no use in calling out sick.
The formula for the annual absence rate is quite similar:
A company’s annual absenteeism rate is equal to the sum of all workdays missed divided by the total number of workdays available for the year.
Take the total number of days in a year and subtract weekends, holidays, and other days off (such as required business days) from that total to get the number of workdays that are actually available.
You may find a fantastic online calculator for this on Workingdays. To use this tool, just enter your country and choose the range of data you need. They also provide an application programming interface (API) that can be used to automatically get the amount of working days for a specific country for a specific period when coupled with HR reporting software.
Example of the absenteeism rate
To better understand the calculation for the absenteeism rate, let’s study an example.
In 2020, someone—let’s call her Jane—had a full-time job in the United States. During that year, she missed 10 days of work. She has a total of 231 workdays, 20 of which are vacation days. For Jane, this would translate to an absenteeism rate of:
Jane’s absenteeism rate is 10/231, which is 4.3%.
You can also use this formula for groups.
The reporting of absenteeism rates
Disparities in reporting absenteeism rates among teams, departments, or regions are common. This is a great method for pinpointing areas with high absenteeism in the company, which can help with more focused interventions.
In addition to the frequency of absence reporting, other absenteeism metrics that are commonly included are the average duration of absence in days, the zero absence rate, the number of episodes of absence, and the number of absence ends. The overall cost of absences and the total number of days missed are two more measures.
Comparison of absence rate and absence frequency
There is a measure called absence reporting frequency. Although both measures of absence are important, the absence rate is a measure of severity and the absence frequency describes the pattern of absences.
If you contract bronchitis and have a 4% absence rate, for instance, you can be sick for 10 consecutive days or for 10 separate days. Your condition is probably not life-threatening in this instance. If you’re already feeling anxious or hurt, taking a day off could help you feel better enough to return to work the following day.
Think about two departments that have a lot of absenteeism. The absence rate is low in one division and high in another. How is this meaningful? One department had numerous shorter absences, whereas the other had fewer individuals sick for an extended period of time (e.g., one person has burnout while everyone else is healthy). Insights into these patterns can point the way to solutions that work.
Intriguing trends emerge with absence rate and absence frequency as time goes on. Avoidable absence decreases with age, particularly for men, according to the research. This may be the result of a generational shift in how seriously workers take their jobs.
Using data from over 70,000 participants, Ng and Feldman (2008) established a negative correlation between age and overall absences (r =.26) and non-illness-related absences (r =.10), as well as a weakly positive correlation between age and sickness absences (r =.02).
So, in a nutshell, younger workers are less likely to get sick than older ones. Nonetheless, studies demonstrate that, on average, they are considerably less inclined to skip out.
The rate of employee absenteeism within a company remains very constant, which is quite interesting. Breaugh (1981) found that out of three workplace attitudes that were associated with absenteeism, the rate of absence in the previous year was the most reliable predictor of absence in the following year.
Just what does a high absence rate mean?
Examining the typical absenteeism rate is the first step in determining if a certain rate is excessive.
A healthy rate of absenteeism is generally considered to be 1.5 percent. No one can ever be completely well, thus it’s acceptable to take a three or four day leave once a year to recover from a bad cold or another illness. This is an average, so don’t get your hopes up about the inclusion of weekends. Although some workers may need to take an additional day off due to the flu, there are those who remain healthy throughout the year.
Just because an individual employee’s absence rate is more than 1.5% doesn’t indicate anything is wrong. People who get the flu can’t work for two weeks, which is equal to 10 days, or a 4.3% absenteeism rate.
The absenteeism rate, however, can tell you a lot when looked at across the entire firm. When the absence rate is more than 1.5%, it’s usually due to factors other than medical problems, such as stress, burnout, a loss of interest or engagement, disagreements with coworkers or superiors, or any other issue.
A structural absenteeism rate below 1.5% is also concerning. Employees may be too scared to call in sick, leading to a lower rate unless your organization offers an exceptional health program. Employees engage in presenteeism when they continue to work while being sick, resulting in decreased productivity, worse health, and fatigue.
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the average yearly absenteeism rate in the US in 2023 was 2.1%. The public sector had a rate of 2.6% and the private sector a rate of 2.0%. A range of three percent to six percent is typical in Europe. Unionization and social security regulations that safeguard workers in Europe likely account for the continent’s greater absenteeism rates.
Approximately 2.5% of GDP, or €420 billion, is lost due to absences every year in Europe. Every year, businesses in the United States lose $225.8 billion due to employee absences.
Six suggestions to reduce absenteeism
Let’s talk about some policies or remedies that are easy to apply and can reduce employee absences. Reducing excessive absenteeism is possible with these strategies. This is by no means an all-inclusive list; rather, the purpose of these absence policies is to spark your imagination so that you might design a plan of action.
- An accommodating policy on remote work: With remote work options, workers can choose to do their jobs from the comfort of their own homes if that’s what works best for them. Working from home allows parents to avoid missing work due to sick children. You can get by just fine at work while you have a regular cold, but you also risk spreading the virus to everyone in the company. Working from home is a great option right now.
- Formalize absence policies: Making absence policies explicit could be beneficial as well. While some workers stay home from work entirely due to a normal cold, others come in for the day but go through two boxes of tissues. These two options aren’t great. Make your policies very clear on how to handle these situations, and then let the employee choose what’s best for them while still letting them keep working as much as possible.
- Educate supervisors on how to handle absences: Continuing from where we left off, it is imperative that managers receive training on how to handle staff absences. One way to reduce employee absences is to have them phone their manager instead of using messaging apps like WhatsApp or email. Another strategy is to check in with them every day.
- Company doctor policy: One strategy to make sure employees get adequate care and prevent them from making unjustified sick days is to give them access to a company doctor.
- Celebrate being present: Employees may be eligible for extra vacation days from certain employers. When workers at one company don’t miss work due to illness, they get an extra day off every quarter. The idea here is to incentivize healthy habits and positive actions.
- Evaluate the company’s internal culture: Excessive absence, as mentioned earlier, may point to issues with the culture or management practices inside your firm. If that’s the case, then any intervention needs to begin here.
Hopefully, this post has made it clear why tracking absenteeism is so vital if you aren’t currently doing so. Not only does it provide you a checkup on the overall health of your company, but it also highlights trouble areas when you break down absenteeism rates by department or unit.
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