Sickness | Reducing long-term sickness - a guide for business

Long-term sickness is an area often seen as something outside an employer’s control, but, more than ever, it can be influenced.

Just like short-term absence, there will of course be instances that can’t be prevented by workplace policy, but there are also many cases where effective planning, management and staff support can help highlight and avoid issues arising.

The CIPD’s eighteenth annual survey report examines trends in absence and health and wellbeing in UK workplaces, ‘Health and Well-Being at Work, 2018’, it was reported more than a fifth of organisations (22 per cent) now report mental ill health as the primary cause of long-term absence.

Wellbeing strategies play a fundamental role reducing these causes and cutting long-term absence. But to put those strategies in place relies on having a solid, evidence-based understanding of wellbeing in the workplace.