Research shows UK firms losing millions of working days to sickness

New data that has just been released shows that companies in the UK lost millions of work days to illness last year, with the number having risen in comparison with that of seven years before.

This data comes from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and it reveals that 148.9 million work days were lost during 2024 to either illness or injury. That number rose by 7% in comparison with 2019, when it stood at 139 million. It should be pointed out though, that the overall number of lost days has been consistently in decline since the middle of the 1990s.
The only time that was not the case was between 2020 and 2022 – at the height of the Covid-19 crisis.

Charlotte Neal from Reward Gateway, a company that provides employee benefits, spoke to HR Magazine about the issue. She stated that it was a cultural matter and that HR teams needed to build environments where workers felt that they could talk about their health and get support.

“The best organisations foster safe cultures where health is openly discussed, and managers are properly equipped to signpost to holistic and flexible wellbeing benefits that cater to all of life’s health needs, not just the ‘trendy’ conditions.”

That kind of top-to-bottom cultural change can be difficult to manage. This is why some HR departments opt to outsource the process to culture change consulting services.

Despite ongoing concerns about lost working time, UK companies should be encouraged by the fact that sick day numbers have dropped since 2022.