The latest 2023 Workplace Wellness Report, a collaboration between Southern Cross Health Society and BusinessNZ, has highlighted a new challenge for New Zealand businesses: a rising trend in staff treating increased sick leave entitlements as additional holiday time.
The survey has also revealed insights into employee absence since sick leave provisions were expanded. Of note, it scrutinises developments following the hike in statutory sick leave from five to 10 days annually, effective from July 2021. It shows that the average absence rate hit an all-time high in 2022, with employees taking off 5.5 days on average, a notable increase from the 4.2 to 4.7 days recorded between 2012 and 2020.
When these figures are extrapolated to the national workforce, it translates to almost 10 million working days lost in 2022 due to employee absence, a significant leap from 7.3 million in the preceding year's report.
While the ongoing effects of the pandemic, including isolation mandates, are partly responsible for this upturn, the report suggests that the pandemic is not the sole factor. A rising cause of employee absence, now ranked seventh, is the perception of “paid sickness absence days being seen as an entitlement by staff suspected to not actually be sick” — a rationale that barely figured in the 2020 data.
While this reason was previously more common among manual workers, the 2022 figures indicate a shift, showing an uptick among both manual and non-manual employees.
Southern Cross Health Society CEO Nick Astwick (pictured above) said that a multitude of factors contribute to the correlation between increased sick leave and absence rates.
“The pandemic has had a huge effect on the workplace and one of its biggest impacts has been the change in people’s attitudes towards working while unwell,” Astwick said. “Obviously, COVID-19 and the need for people to isolate while they have the virus has meant people are having to take more sick days, too, especially for those who have children to care for. The increased sick leave entitlements make it easier for people to do that.”
The report also revealed that the primary reasons for staff absence in 2022 were non-work-related illnesses, including COVID-19, and the necessity to look after a sick family member or dependent. Organisations reported a slight decline in employees choosing to work from home instead of taking sick leave, with the proportion dropping to 51.5% from over 60% in 2020.
Astwick said that while it is positive for staff to have extra time to recuperate from illnesses, there is a suspicion among businesses that some may be misusing this benefit as standard leave.
“This finding demonstrates just some of the challenges our businesses are facing in balancing doing the right thing by having people stay home when unwell, while also managing a workforce with more flexible work options in 2023,” he said.
In other recent developments for the insurer, Nuku Ora, the team behind the Wellington Round the Bays event, has announced Southern Cross as the event's new naming rights partner.
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