Workers in Newcastle take the most sick days of any region, according to employment law firm, Peninsula.

Workers from the area were absent for an average 11 days last year, while those in Birmingham took the least with just eight.

Other regions in the study notched up absences that averaged between the two:

• Dublin: nine days(2004) – nine days (2003)




• Edinburgh: nine days (2004) – nine days (2003)




• London – 10 days (2004) – seven days (2003)




• Manchester – nine days (2004) – 11 days (2003)




• Liverpool – nine days (2004) – eight days (2003)




• Cardiff – nine days (2004) – eight days (2003)




• Glasgow – nine days (2004) – eight days (2003)




• Belfast – nine days (2004) – eight days (2003)




• Newcastle – 11 days (2004) – eight days (2003)




• Birmingham – eight days (2004) – eight days (2003)

The figures show that sickness rates have increased across the board. In 2000 the national average was just five days, in 2003 it came in at eight days and last year it increased to nine days.

Cold and flu are the main causes of sickness related absence but bosses admit that they don’t believe that the majority of absence is genuine.

Sixty-two per cent of respondents said they believe the majority of absences aren’t genuine. A trend that is increasing, in 2003 when the same sentiments were tested just 44% felt the same.

The feelings are compounded by the days of the week when absence occurs most frequently:

• Sunday: 10%




• Monday: 23%




• Tuesday: 11%




• Wednesday: 8%




• Thursday:10%




• Friday: 25%




• Saturday: 13%

Peter Done, managing director of Peninsula said that society made it too easy for employers to phone in sick without being ‘harassed, questioned or disciplined’ by their employer and that increasing absence on Fridays and Mondays was bound to arouse suspicion amongst employers.

”The question has to be what can an employer do to combat the problem? The correct way is to ensure that they have policies and procedures in place so that they can question an employee when they return back to work. This can be useful for a number of reasons, obviously to deter future sickness by conducting a back to work interview and secondly also to ensure that the employee is fit enough to return back to work. Sickness is also not fair on fellow employees, especially those that work for a small business. As I have said when one of those employees takes time off, you have the situation where a substantial percentage of your workforce are not present. This obviously adds pressure on the existing workforce, making their job that bit more difficult.”

Done advises workers to help themselves by taking up offers of flu jabs and maintaining a healthy diet.

”Hopefully employers will introduce policies that will deter employees from taking non genuine sick days however this problem is never going to go away. UK businesses are always going to suffer from absenteeism problems and bogus sickness will always account for a percentage of the absenteeism problem. Absenteeism costs businesses money and I would hate to put a figure on how much sickness costs UK employers.”

A total of 3212 workers were quizzed as part of the survey.