The Long & Short of it: The Compounding Cost of Sickness - Workshop Audit part 5

Workshop Audit part 5 - Compounding the cost of Long and Short Term Sickness in the Workplace

Runtime: 15 mins

Target: HR, Employers. Researchers. CFO, CEO.

Don't forget your figures from part 4, and have notes open or a pen and paper handy.

In our latest episode, we dive deep into the impact of short-term vs. long-term sickness absence and how it can reveal toxic workplace cultures. Did you know that the average employee takes 9.4 days off sick each year? That's nearly two full weeks of lost productivity!

Short-term absences might seem common, but it's those long-term cases that can wreak havoc on your team's morale and finances. Mental health issues are now the leading cause of these long-term absences, making it crucial for organizations to understand the underlying causes.

Let’s break this down:
- Short-term sickness accounts for most absences but has lower costs.
- A few long-term cases can result in significant financial impact.
- Understanding these dynamics can help you identify potential toxic environments.

When you know your numbers, you can take action! This is not just about managing sickness, but about fostering a healthier workplace overall.

LINKS

CIPD Sick days

RED Edge Newsletter 

#Chronicedge #WorkplaceWellbeing #SicknessAbsence #MentalHealthMatters #ToxicCulture

Thank you for watching, my goal to help 1 MILLION people understand that Illness is NOT a burden once they unleash their edge.

If you like the show share us on social media and help others discover their edge.

This is not medical or financial advice, you should always check with a professional and gather your own research, this is purely to get the conversation started.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Based on current UK median earnings, the daily cost of covering or losing output quickly has not a single long-term case lasting three months can easily run into the tens of thousands of pounds. And we are back to the workplace audit hidden costs, real gains, well-being, return on investment uncovered. I'm your host, Elliot Evans, and today we are looking at the compounding cost of sickness in the workplace. Now it is important to note that before we move into the figures, that long term will look worse collectively. But sometimes short-term sickness coupled with absentism in some departments can be a great metric in identifying a toxic culture or dissatisfaction in the workplace, which are key areas to for overall productivity and financial loss. Now moving on, as we looked on in episode four, we calculated the visible costs of unauthorized absenteism, the late starts, the early finishes, and the daily distractions. In today's episode, we turn full sickness absence and the critical differences between short-term and long-term cases. Now 9.4 days are lost in sickness on average over the last year. That's nearly two full working weeks per person, and the split between short and long term tells you exactly where your money is going. So let's break it down.

SPEAKER_00 2:02

Now why is the split between short and long term matters?

SPEAKER_01 2:09

And sickness absence is different from unauthorized absenteeism we covered last time. This authorized time off is due to ill health, yet it still carries a heavy financial price. According to the CIPD's Health and Wellbeing at Work 2025 report, the average number of sickness absence days per employee reached, as we've said, 9.4 days in 2025, the highest level in 15 years, 0.7.8 in 2023, and mental health is now the leading cause of long-term absences with a major contributor to short-term absence as well. The key insight into the all-normal sickness days are the same. A few long-term cases can easily outweigh dozens of short-term ones in the total costs, and that is why we split the data in our diagnostic work. So let's get the figures out you've had over these work uh the workplace. So let's look at the same 100 employee organization that we work with in episode 4 for consistency. At the current UK average of 9.4 sickness days per employee, this team loses roughly 940 sickness days per year. Now most of these are short-term absences. Typically mean minor illnesses less than a few days. These are high in volume but relatively low as a case cost per case as people usually return very quickly. However, a small number of long-term cases, generally defined as four weeks or more, drive a disproportionate share of the total cost. These often involve mental health conditions, stress or chronic illness, and they may require adjustments or arrangements that can lead to lost knowledge, reduced team morale, and sometimes need for workplace adjustments or phase returns. In realistic terms, short-term sickness might account for the majority of the days lost, but a smaller slice of the overall financial impact. Long-term sickness, however, even if it only represents 10 to 20% of total days, can easily account for 40 to 60% more of the total sickness cost because each case can be so expensive to manage. So using an average hourly rate of £25 based on current UK median earnings, the daily cost of covering or losing output quickly adds up. A single long-term case lasting three months can easily run into the tens of thousands of pounds when you factor in at temporary cover, management time and lost productivity. And this is where the sickness compounds the absentism cost we calculated in the last episode. Someone on long-term sick leave isn't just absent, they create a chain reaction, extra pressure on colleagues, potential burnout in the team, and sometimes further absences.

SPEAKER_00 5:50

So look a little bit of practical. Let's uh get some pad and paper out.

SPEAKER_01 5:56

Here's your practical takeaway from today. So using your own data or best estimates. Number one, pull or estimate your organization's total sickness absence days over the past 12 months. Number two, roughly split them how many days were short term under four weeks versus how many were long term over four weeks. Estimate the annual cost impact. You can simply use a daily rate based on average salary divided by 220 working days or £120 per day in lost profit as a benchmark from recent government analysis. Now write down your rough total sickness cost and note whether long-term cases are driving a surprising share of it. This number becomes very powerful when you combine it with absentism figures from the last episode.

SPEAKER_00 7:02

So moving forward.

SPEAKER_01 7:06

Now you now understand why short-term versus long-term split is one of the most important distinctions in any workforce diagnostic.

SPEAKER_00 7:19

It's also really important, just freehanding a little bit here as well.

SPEAKER_01 7:23

As we said before at the beginning, very beginning is when you do that compounding effect with asenteism to identifying toxic workplaces. So the best thing to do is if you can, and if you have more than one department, is to department split it and then do it. It will give you a great identifier if you have any issues in the different departments. One department might have a high rate, other departments may have low rates. So doing departmental split will actually give you a better indication of what is going on in your business. And it is one of the reasons why we talk about that the long-term is not your enemy, dissatisfaction is because your dissatisfaction figure will be a higher cost, as we've talked about. But long-term, or it's all about prevention. If you have things in place already, a lot of those absent days for long-term sickness will be reduced or may not really need to be there. They might actually be under the four weeks, dependent on what is needed or what they have. So it's important that prevention is better than reaction in all of these cases. Anyway, we're gonna when we come back to episode six of the audit, we're gonna move on to retention and the ripple effect and how one departure can trigger far more cost than the obvious replacement fee. And if you would like the Chronic Edge and myself to run a full diagnostic for your organization using your numbers, send me a message and mention this podcast and for a listener discount on the Cedar audit. Again, thank you for listening. I know these are usually quite quick. I am just not feeling it today. I am pretty poorly today, very, very tired and everything. So I do apologize for having such a short, short, short audit episode on there. But it's it's it's important to differentiate a lot of these audit episodes into short little bursts because they can be overwhelming when you put them all at once. And when the academy is up and running, which will not be too long, I will be putting out stuff uh on there. It's it's the uh it's the filling everything in. The actual platform itself will probably be fine. Uh, and putting it all out there is okay, and everything is putting all the other stuff together, like your courses and your guides and all that, and it's just me. So it's the reason why it's taking so long to go live, but it will be live this summer, and in there you're gonna have uh multiple different courses, including this workshop audit that will be a longer basically can all do at once. There'll be other elements in there for you as well. Uh multiple different courses. I've just been looking at a few of what I'll be putting in there as well to give you. Let's pull a couple up just to give you an idea of some of the courses you'll get to look forward to when the Academy is up and running. Let's see we have we'll be doing the language of loss on auditing, which we've uh we've done previously in this, as you've seen in this one before, but we'll be looking at translating it into well-being and boardroom data. We'll be looking at flare-safe operations for workflow. Uh, we're looking at um weaponizing the edge of strategic management for neurodistinctive talents. Uh, we're gonna look at structural interventions versus surface well-being. There's gonna be a load of playbooks in there, as we've talked about with arthritis and things like that. There'll be multiple ones for different conditions in there. We're gonna do diagnostic disclosure dynamics, looking at the psychological safety for HR and management. There's lots of different things. Very inclusive recruitment, so auditing the talent of acquisition. You know, I've got a lot of different things in there, a lot of autism-related stuff as well. We're gonna do uh harnessing precision and reducing flip friction and things, lots of, lots of, lots of different courses. So that's the reason it's taken a little bit more time to put it out there because I want to get a lot of few calls. I don't want you just coming on and going, there's nothing there. I want you to come on and have an opportunity to do a couple of different courses, uh, have lots of discussions with different people with for from employers, HR, two individuals who are just looking for support and researchers and have those you know talks, not arguments, not arguments in the slightest, you'll be banned, but uh conversations to get everybody, get the support and the education that they need in these particular areas to get the best out of work for everybody. And I mean that's why I always say about you know career, business, life, it's it's for everybody. And uh there'll be other things in there, I'll put some extra exhibits in there, I'll put some extra guides in there, there'll be reports, all the all the details that I put, every link that I put in, all the links will be in there and they'll be all headed up so they'll show that if you've got a particular thing that you're looking for, you'll be able to find it easy. So, like I said, there's a lot of stuff going into this academy that will be up and running this summer and everything. I'm gonna put some I'll go I'll put a launch video in so you can uh you can have you can find out about information about that. And it's not gonna be stupidly expensive, you're gonna be able to access all of these things unless I've got a course in there that's done by a partner and everything, which I might work because I obviously I didn't pay them, so that's a bit different. But if it's if it's one that I've I've done with or the Chronic Edge has done in general and everything, courses are all included in your price, and your price it's under 50 quid. Actually, to be honest, it's probably under 40 quid and everything and a month and it and it it dead dead dead cheap in that respect. Not cheap because it's rubbish, but uh cheap because I want to make it affordable for everybody. You know, I want to uh you know, chronic illness is but is bad enough. I don't want to stick a lot of money on top of it, and it's about the education side of it as well, so you know it's gonna be affordable per month in there, and you'll be able to access all of this for your price, and there's other hidden hechas in there, especially if you are somebody with chronic illness or neurodivergence and you are looking to set up a business. That bit might take a little bit longer, but we're gonna put something in there to help you guys out as well, uh, because you are like me in that respect. So there'll be things in there for you as well, and we're gonna have data reports in there, loads, loads of stuff, loads of stuff. And I will do a full video on that once that's operational or at least viewable and to get some early people in. And I'll do an early bed special in there as well. So, anyway, that is that is that is that. Uh, we're gonna be next back to illness is not a burden. We're gonna be taking a new condition. Uh, it is diabetes week next week, so we might I might film something on diabetes. I don't have that. I don't know, yeah, weird one that I don't have. But no, I don't have that. I did have a family member that had my grandmother had that, and I do know people that do have that, so I will speak with them. Uh obviously not my grandma, but I will speak with um some of the other people that have those conditions so we can get a true representation of how that interacts in the workplace to give you that full information, especially in the strategies element. So, yes, there we go, there we go. And that's uh that's to just get an extra couple of minutes on the on the video, but uh it it's important information as well, of course it is, of course it is. And I just want uh so again I want to say thank you, and remember that illness is not a burden, it's data, use it and unleash the edge in your career, in your business, and in your life.

SPEAKER_00 14:53

I've been Elliot Evans, and I'll see you on the other side. I'll see you soon.

SPEAKER_01 14:58

Bye bye.