Sickness absence | Why remote monitoring requires urgent attention

By Colin Hawes, Head of Claims, Generali UK Employee Benefits

Reports indicate that employers are more in the dark than ever right now when it comes to employee sickness absence.

What’s more, there could be greater challenges looming in terms of absence and claims – particularly with regards to work-related stress and burnout. In short, at a time when remote working is becoming a permanent feature for many, and business recovery depends on balancing cost savings with employee engagement and productivity, there’s an urgent need to get on top of all of this. This will require strong partnership working between employers, their providers and brokers.

It is predicted that a higher incidence of mental health (MH) and musculoskeletal (MSK) claims are on the horizon, but the lack of data right now on short-term remote absences is making the size and scale of underlying problems difficult to measure and predict. Consequently, the means to prevent small issues becoming big issues – in the shape of health and wellbeing interventions – aren’t always being put in place.