Only days after the Foreign Secretary told Britons that they should work harder, official figures revealed that more employees were going to work when sick due to growing concerns over job security.
In an interview with the Sunday Telegraph, William Hague warned the coalition government’s business critics that there was “only one growth strategy: work hard”.
The problem with the UK was that it had suffered from decades of a declining work ethic, which needed to be rescued “in the nick of time”, he said.
In order to remedy the situation, however, business leaders needed to stop “complaining” and “get on with the task of delivering more of those jobs and more of those exports”, Hague added.
The jibe appeared to be aimed at critics such as Justin King, the chief executive of Sainsbury’s, who last week accused the government of lacking a coherent strategy to boost economic growth in the Queen’s Speech.
The ‘work harder’ message is believed to be a key plank of the government’s political fightback and is intended to appeal to hard-pressed families and “strivers”.
Sickness absence and presenteeism
But according to data published by the Office for National Statistics, UK employees are working harder than ever.
The number of working days lost to sickness fell by 4% to 131 million last year, with the most common causes being minor ailments such as colds and ‘flu (27.5 million days); musculoskeletal problems (34.4 million days) and stress, depression and anxiety (13.1 million days).
Sickness absence levels have been falling steadily since 2003, when the 178 million days lost then were 36% higher than in 2011. This, in turn, was a drop from a peak 17 years ago of 7.2 days per worker.
Other findings revealed that:
- Employers with the largest workforces experience the highest levels of sickness absence
- Women and older workers take more days off with illness than other groups
- Self-employed and private sector workers are the least likely to take time off
- London has the lowest sickness absence levels, while the North East of England and Wales have the highest
Work Foundation spokeswoman Ksenia Zheltoukhova told the Guardian: “Sickness absence is in the spotlight because it is something that management can measure, putting individual managers under pressure to reduce the level of absenteeism among staff. But it leads to increased presenteeism, especially during a recession.”
Stress had fallen down the list of causes because “people don’t want to say they are stressed because it makes them look weak. In the current economic situation, workers really don’t want to appear weak in case they lose their job so they will come to work even when they shouldn’t,” she added.
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One Response
Downward spiral
Work harder they say – if only they knew what it meant.
I think absentiseism is a great relfection on the culture and nature of your business, I’m sure there are countless occasions in businesses when employees have been ‘Ill’ but are still well enough to come into work and do a job – if they wanted to. Overworking staff only leads to discontent and lack of motivation and from there it’s only a downward spiral.
Dave Evans
accessplanit
Learning Management system