The corporate fightback against culture of sick notes

Millions of workers in UK were signed off last year by GPs but companies want to curb the trend, reports

‘The start of my career was savage – at no point did I think I would just call in sick for weeks on end,” says David*, 34. The London-based media manager is, therefore, astonished to see how some of his staff treat sick days – it is not unusual for them to take 10 days or more in a row.

Sick days are rising rapidly across the country. More than 11m sick notes were issued last year, NHS England has said, double the number handed out less than a decade ago.

That doesn’t take into account the millions of people who are off work for less than seven days and, therefore, don’t need a doctor’s sign-off.

A record 185.6m working days were lost to sickness across the economy in 2022. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) is expected to publish fresh figures on sickness-related absences in the coming months, with few expecting a decline.

The surge is part of a broader health crisis that has seen a record 2.8m people signed off work permanently because of illness.

Long NHS waiting lists and a rise in mental health problems postpandemic have been blamed.

However, managers in corporate Britain say the surge is also being fuelled by changing attitudes to work.

“It’s definitely a young person thing,” says David. “They have a much more liberal attitude with sick days and might take a day off because they have the sniffles.”

The shift has happened since the pandemic. In 2018, the year before Covid-19 struck, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) said a record number of people were coming into work while ill; 86pc of workers had witnessed “presenteeism”.

Since then, sick days have surged. The average British employee took 7.8 days off because of illness in the 12 months to September, according to CIPD, up from 5.8 before the pandemic struck. The figure is forecast to more than double by 2030.

The same trend can be seen across Europe, where workers typically take even more days off work for poor health. “Averages in most other countries are 10-plus days – we’re at around six [per worker],” says Tony Wilson, director of the Institute for Employment Studies.

In part, the increase reflects the fact that it is now considered far less acceptable for people to bring their germs into work post-pandemic. “Recent rises most likely reflect people realising post-Covid that it’s better not to go into work if you’re poorly,” says Wilson. However, a generational shift suggests something else is at play. CIPD’s data reveal that the demographic behind most sickness related absences has flipped from the over-60s to the under-30s.

Some believe the strong job market is to blame for younger workers becoming far more willing to call in sick to work. David is barely 10 years older than the colleagues he is complaining about. But having graduated just after the financial crisis when jobs were few and far between, he had little power in the labour market and was grateful for the opportunities he got.

“It used to be that you worked hard, proved yourself, and then moved up the ladder to be the boss of your own destiny,” he says.

The economy today is very different: there are just over 900,000 jobs available and one in five employers are struggling to fill vacancies.

“I do think a tight labour market means employees are more likely to take sick leave in borderline cases as they are less worried about losing their jobs,” says James Davies, an employment lawyer at Lewis Silkin.

Many companies will pay staff their full wages for a period while off sick and some managers fear that people are seeing this entitlement as extra holiday days, rather than a safety net.

Convinced that the surge in sick days is not just about worsening health among workers, many bosses are now scrambling to find ways to address the issue.

“We’ve just upgraded our HR system in part because it’s made it easier to track sick days,” says the founder of a charity that has seen a 65pc rise in sick days in six months.

“We don’t want it to be too easy for someone to go off sick so we have introduced a policy where they have to call up their manager, as opposed to just clicking a button saying they are off.” Hours after we speak, two of his team go home ill.

The rise in sick days is becoming increasingly costly to the economy.

Insurer Zurich believes it will cost Britain £66bn by the end of the decade. Ministers are taking notice.

Rishi Sunak on Friday vowed to end Britain’s “sick note culture”, unveiling a plan to strip GPs of their power to sign people off work.

“We don’t just need to change the sick note, we need to change the sick note culture so the default becomes what work you can do – not what you can’t,” the Prime Minister said.

The changes are aimed at curbing the number of people signed-off long-term sick, rather than sick days, but it is part of a broader push by the Government to keep people in work.

Employment lawyers warn that companies planning their own fightback need to tread extremely carefully indeed.

While staff can be dismissed for taking too many sick days, employers must first investigate the employees’

‘Younger people have a much more liberal attitude with sick days and take a day off with the sniffles’

‘We don’t want it to be too easy for someone to go off sick so we have a policy where they have to call a manager’

medical conditions and it is a last resort after a long process. Employers can discipline staff for taking too many sick days but only if they have grounds to suspect the system is being abused.

Companies are asking law firms to comb through pages and pages of spreadsheets tracking corporate absences over the last few years in the hunt for any patterns – for example, taking a sick day after big football matches or regularly on a Friday.

The burden of proof is on the businesses: one City lawyer said employers had hired private detectives to find evidence that staff were pulling illegitimate sickies. There are legal risks too. Staff can bring employment claims fee-free. Addressing the issue is also highly sensitive, particularly if someone is taking time out for their mental health. “You can’t see what’s happening in someone’s brain,” argues Ranjit Dhindsa, an employment lawyer at Fieldfisher.

She doesn’t agree that the divide is generational, or even that the country is getting more sick.

In her view, sick days are rising simply because people are more aware about their mental health and how to look after it.

“Sick health used to be physical. What’s happened in more recent times is there’s much more understanding and talk about hidden conditions that can’t be seen. Someone might suffer from a chronic condition but look fine.

There’s a much better understanding of mental ill health in a way that never existed before.”

Juliet Stuttard, a director in PwC’s workforce team, says: “Managers need to be better equipped to spot a potential absence before it happens.”

She argues that focusing on someone’s “enthusiasm, commitment and emotional connection towards their work” could contribute to people taking fewer sick days.

However, to many managers on the front lines of the sick-day crisis, however, this will seem like little more than bromides. David says: “I don’t know what to do.”