Sickness absence affects every business of every size, and when an employee calls in sick, it can have a massive impact on operations. But, on a wider scale, how big is the problem of sickness absence for UK businesses. Well, the CIPD has published its Health and Wellbeing at Work 2025 report, supported by simply health.
And the headline is that employees in the UK took an overall average of 9.4 days’ sickness absence per year. This is a significant increase from an overall average of 7.8 days in 2023 when the survey was last carried out and 5.8 days in 2022.
What else do we know?
Breaking the 2025 figures down further, employees in the public sector took an average of 13.3 days, in the private sector they took an average of 9.1 and for employees in the non-profit sector, an average of 6.5 days per year.
The top cause of long-term absence in 2025 is mental ill health, with 41% of respondents citing it within their top three causes. Minor illnesses were by far the main reason for short-term absence (78%), with mental ill health as the second main cause (29%).
The report found that more organisations are taking a strategic approach to wellbeing. Rachel Suff, Senior Policy and Practice Adviser at the CIPD, said: “It’s really important for individuals, organisations and society that employers take a proactive approach to support people managing health conditions while working.
“The longer someone is off, the more they might struggle to return. Long or repeated periods of sickness absence can make it difficult for organisations to plan their work, and unplanned absences can also place additional strain on colleagues.”
According to the findings, the top three measures to support mental health at work are access to counselling services, phased returns to work and/or other reasonable adjustments and offering an Employee Assistance Programme (EAP).
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What does the future of sickness absence hold?
Through the Employment Rights Bill, the Government proposes to reform Statutory Sick Pay by making it payable to all workers from the first day of absence at a rate of either 80% of weekly earnings or the flat rate, whichever is lower. This means sickness absence could soon be on the rise, and in turn, so could the cost to employers.
Under the Government’s Roadmap for Delivering Change, these changes are expected to come into effect in April 2026. It’s therefore crucial that employers have robust absence management policies and processes in place to mitigate these potential increased costs.
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How is SSP going to change when the Employment Rights Bill is introduced?
