The Southern Cross Health Insurance and BusinessNZ Workplace Wellness study found an increase in workers taking sick leave. At the same time, 90% of employers encourage employees to stay home to recover and care for family members.
The study surveyed 111 public and private organisations employing a total of 173,982 people, including 163,030 permanent staff.
The results indicated that workers took an average of 6.7 sick days per year, which is over a 20% increase from the 5.5 days taken in 2022.
“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,” Business NZ CEO Katherine Rich said.
“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.”
While employers are implementing measures such as in-house vaccinations and supporting workplace health programmes to protect productivity, the level of workplace absences is costing the economy $4.17 billion annually.
“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 noted.
Rich explained that people were also taking leave to care for whānau and dependants, which was the second leading cause of workplace absences, and this trend is expected to grow as the country’s population ages.
The report indicated that the increase in sick leave entitlement to 10 days per year, implemented in 2021, seems to be a factor in the rising absence rates.
According to Rich, some employers worried that employees might be exploiting the increased paid leave to take days off without being sick but described this as a “leadership issue” and said such cases were “in the minority.”
Meanwhile, Southern Cross Health Insurance chief executive Nick Astwick said the report might be seen as a more precise representation of the time people require to recover from illness.
“Perhaps this is a more accurate reflection of the time people need to recover from illness and to look after dependents who may be sick.”
“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.