Our latest shrinkage benchmarking survey shows average sickness absence at around 8%. At first glance, this appears higher than last year’s 7.6%, suggesting an upward trend. That conclusion would be misleading. A closer look shows the apparent increase is driven by sampling rather than worsening performance. As with last year, there is wide variation across organisations, with sickness rates ranging from around 3.8% to just over 20%. That spread matters far more than the headline average.

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