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Business NZ says workers are taking more sick leave but 90 percent of employers support staff staying home to get well and look after loved ones.
Southern Cross Health Insurance and BusinessNZ’s Workplace Wellness study canvassed 110 public and private organisations – employing employing 173,982 people.
Results showed workers spent an average 6.7 days a year off sick – a more than 20 percent jump on 5.5 days off in 2022.
Business NZ CEO Katherine Rich told RNZ Morning Report the country’s employers were getting the message about the need to not come to work when staff were unwell.
“The culture shift has been quite dramatic since the 80s and 90s with this belief that one always had to ‘soldier on’ à la the Codral [flu medication] ad.
“Times have changed. People know now that – if they are unwell – they stay home and it’s not as it once was where people would soldier on and come to work and splutter and spread additional bugs.”
Absence a significant drain on economy
Rich said employers were taking measures including in-house vaccinations and funding workplace health programmes to safeguard productivity but the degree of workplace absence was costing the economy $4.17 billion a year.
“The big bump in absence does have a major economic impact. The total absence cost is a reminder to us that if we were more healthy there’d be a big bump to the economy as well,” Rich said.
The report showed the change in sick leave entitlement to 10 days per annum, introduced in 2021, appeared to be contributing to the growth in absence rates
Rich said people were also taking time off to care for whanau and dependants – which was the second highest driver of workplace absence – and that effect was likely to increase with the country’s ageing population.
She said some employers were concerned that employees were taking advantage of the increased paid leave – to take days off when they were not sick – but Rich said that was a “leadership issue” and those instances were “in the minority”.
Survey findings reflect recovery time
Southern Cross Health Insurance chief executive Nick Astwick said the report could be interpreted as a more accurate reflection of time people needed to recover from illness .
“If employees are encouraged to take the right measures to be healthy they can get back on track more rapidly and continue to make a sustained contribution for longer. This can help drive the considerable costs of absence down,” Astwick said.
Working from home entrenched in workplace culture
The study also revealed that working from home had become entrenched in the country’s workplace culture – with one to two days per week now considered standard practice.
However, while small businesses reported an increase in remote work days from 2022, the practise was declining in larger organisations.
About 80 percent of respondents said working from home improved employee satisfaction and retention with nearly 50 percent saying it provided access to a wider pool talent.
However nearly 60 percent of employers felt having workers out of the office compromised team collaboration.
The report’s authors noted that remote work had blurred the line between working while slightly unwell and taking a proper sick day to rest and recover.
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