During the spring of 2005 a postal survey of EEF members was carried out to look at sickness absence and labour turnover in the previous year. Responses from 600 organisations (employing 90,515 employees) were usable for the main absence sections, and from 701 organisations (employing over 117,000 employees) for the labour turnover section. The survey covered England, Wales and Northern Ireland, as well as different manufacturing sectors.
EEF member companies reported an overall absence rate of 3.6% (the overall absence rate for 2003 was 2%, according to the EEF/IRS survey). Absence levels in small companies (employing 1–50 employees) are significantly lower than those in larger companies. Small companies with less than 50 employees have on average absence of 6.15 days per employee per year, whereas on average per year companies employing more than 100 employees lose over 8 days per employee to absence.
Long-term absence is more prevalent as a proportion of total absence among manual workers. There are noticeable differences in absence levels between the regions and between manufacturing sectors, which highlight the importance of nonmedical factors in the prevalence of absence in organisations.
With respect to significant causes of absence, we found back pain and other joint/muscular problems were more of an issue than stress, depression and other mental illnesses. The principal barriers to rehabilitation are similar to the EEF/IRS survey findings of 2003 – the nature of the employee’s health condition, employee resistance and NHS waiting lists – but we can now clearly see that the main barrier is considered to be the GP.
Average labour turnover was 13.6% (nearly 15% for manual workers and just over 11% for non-manual workers), which compares favourably with a national average of 15.7%. We believe that our findings will help organisations to develop a more detailed benchmark of their absence rates and patterns than has previously been possible. The increase in overall absence among our members, from 2% in 2003 to 3.6% in 2004, is not in keeping with reports from other organisations. This finding supports what has been anecdotally reported to us – sickness absence is becoming a bigger problem.
The priorities identified in our survey of 2003 remain the same: better guidance for absence and rehabilitation; faster access to NHS services; an improvement in the training of GPs on fitness for work; and ‘joined-up’ government initiatives.