Sick day stigma | 1 in 3 UK staff didn't take sick leave in 2021

If you thought the pandemic might have led to record numbers of employees calling in sick to work, you’re in for a surprise – according to a new survey by Instantprint, one third of UK adults did not call in sick last year at all.

And the survey found that just 2.3 million Brits took time off work due to COVID in 2021. The UK’s working population is 32.5 million – so this equates to just 7% of working Brits in the UK taking COVID-related time off last year.

Instantprint surveyed 1,000 adults and extrapolated this information out to get the data for the entire British population. What it found is that COVID hasn’t perhaps had the dramatic impact on the working nation’s health that one might expect.

Interestingly, the survey found that COVID isn’t even in the top 10 reasons why workers called in sick in 2020 – the top spots were taken by flu (22%) and colds and sniffles (18%).