Sickness absence rates of workers in the UK labour market, including number of days lost and reasons for absence.

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has affected the sickness absence data in a number of ways. While the virus may have led to additional sickness absence, measures such as furloughing, social distancing, shielding and increased homeworking appear to have helped reduce other causes of absence, allowing the general downward trend to continue.

A high number of people in employment were on furlough during 2020; this means they were temporarily away from employment that they expected to return to. Furloughed employments, as reported in HM Revenue and Customs’s Coronavirus retention scheme statistics increased from the start of the scheme on 20 March to a peak of 8.9 million employments on 8 May 2020. The figures from 31 January 2020 show that the number of employments furloughed was 4.7 million.

Furloughing has impacted some of the measures used in this analysis. Individuals may have been asked to “shield” during the pandemic; we cannot quantify how many of these are employed and able to work from home, how many were furloughed or how many are otherwise classified. This group of people would normally have a higher sickness absence rate than the not shielding group; if fewer from this group are in work then they will be contributing less to the number taking days off because of sickness or injury and could be one explanation for the reduction in the sickness absence rate in 2020.

Homeworking became more prevalent in 2020, in April 2020, nearly half (47%) of people in employment did at least some of their work from home. This, together with government asking people to social distance and self-isolate may have led to less exposure to germs and minimise some of the usual sickness absences. Homeworking could also allow people to work when they were a little unwell, they might not have travelled to a workplace to work but feel well enough to work from home.

The total number of days lost because of sickness or injury and the number of days lost per worker both saw a significant fall in 2020. The data that feed into the total number of days lost and days lost per worker include furloughed workers; therefore, some of this fall will be because fewer people are in work to be taking days off because of sickness or injury. In addition, those employed but on furlough are included in the denominator for the number of days lost per worker but would not be contributing to the numerator.

The sickness absence rate, on the other hand, will not be affected by furloughed workers in the same way. This is derived as the total hours lost as a proportion of total hours worked. While there will be less hours lost and less hours worked, those contributing to both totals are consistent, therefore this measure should still be comparable over time. Since this measure is least impacted by the pandemic measures, it is therefore the most appropriate measure to use for sickness absence analysis to ensure comparability over time.

‘Minor illnesses’ account for over a quarter of all occurrences of sickness absence in 2020