Workers ‘too scared to go off sick’ as recession bites: Number of absences drops to record low



The recession has fuelled a widespread paranoia among workers who are ‘too scared’ about losing their jobs to take time off work when they are sick, official figures revealed today.

The Office for National Statistics said the average number of sick days taken by workers has dropped to the lowest number since records began in 1993.

Since the recession began in 2008, the average number of sick days has fallen every single year to the current all-time low of just 4.5 days per year.

Recession blues: Workers are 'too scared' about losing their jobs to take time off work when they are sick

In 1993, the average was 7.2 days. By 2007 - the year before the recession began - it was 5.6 days, but has fallen each year from 5.3 to 5 to 4.7 and, most recently, to 4.5 last year.

Experts today said many workers are not taking off a single day all year, even if they get struck down by an illness which would usually leave them in bed for a week.

Professor Cary Cooper, from the Lancaster University Management School, said: ‘People are too scared to take time off.

‘Even if they are ill, they are coming into work. It is called "sickness presenteeism".

‘Do you think anybody wants to have a bad sickness absence record with the boss at the current time?’

It comes as a time when unemployment has ballooned to 2.65million, with more than 170,000 extra people over the last year desperately searching for a job but failing to find one.

The problem would be even worse if many unemployed people were not accepting part-time jobs because they could not find full-time employment.



Brendan Barber, general secretary of the Trades Union Congess, said: ‘The biggest problem workplaces face is not absenteeism but "presenteeism" where workers come in when they are too ill.

Sign of the times: The news that Lloyds chief executive Antonio Horta-Osorio (pictured) was timing time off work due to exhaustion last year caused widespread shock

‘Presenteeism can multiply problems by making someone ill for longer and spreading germs around the workplace.’

Professor Cooper added: ‘People are feeling so insecure about their job that, even when they are ill, they are going to come to work.

‘The last thing in the world that they need is redundancy.’

In a sign of the extreme presenteeism culture in Britain, the news that the chief executive of Lloyds was timing time off work due to exhaustion last year caused widespread shock.

Antonio Horta-Osorio, who returned to work in January, later described how he would ‘go to bed exhausted but could not get to sleep’, adding: ‘I could not switch off.’

The Portugese-born boss, who spent a week in mental health clinic the Priory, said the gruelling experience meant he now understood why sleep deprivation is used to torture prisoners.

Despite the falling number of sick days, the ONS figures show public sector workers continue to take more sick days than those in the private sector.

Last year, the average public sector worker lost 2.6 per cent of their normal hours to sickness, compared to 1.6 per cent in the private sector.

One reason, given by the ONS, is because they are more likely to be paid when they off sick than those in the private sector.

This is because there are more self-employed workers, who get no sickness pay, in the private sector, the ONS said today.

Official figures have also shown how the average state worker earns more money than those in the private sector and does fewer hours’ each week.

On average, a state worker earns £16.24 per hour, but a private sector worker earns an average of £14.11 per hour, a gap of £2.13 per hour, or 15 per cent.

And, while the average private sector worker does 33 hours and 12 minutes each week, a public sector worker does 30 hours and 30 minutes.