LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM – New research released today by employee health, safety and wellbeing platform Sonder reveals a growing risk to the UK workforce, with frontline staff and young workers hardest hit. The statistics show that one in ten workers are considering leaving the workforce entirely in the next year due to poor physical or mental health, equivalent to more than three million people and a potential cost of £38bn to the economy.
Sonder’s Absenteeism Crisis Report‘s findings are stark: a further one in five (22%) workers say they are likely to reduce their working hours over the same period, meaning the true cost to the economy is likely even higher. Yet only one in four (25%) workers say their employer provides any health support at all, and nearly half (45%) say their employer offers nothing.
Among workers who have taken time off, nearly half (47%) say faster access to a GP would have helped them return to work sooner, and more than a third (39%) say faster mental health support would have made a difference.
“The debate has rightly focused on how we get more people back into work. But our findings suggest one of the biggest opportunities is stopping people from leaving in the first place. If the Government is serious about boosting growth, employers have to become part of that solution,” said Craig Cowdrey, Co-Founder and CEO of Sonder.
The UK Absenteeism Crisis
Absence is particularly acute among frontline workers. Verbal abuse has become routine for large numbers of retail, healthcare and hospitality staff, with more than half (52%) of retail workers experiencing it in the past year, almost double the national average (28%), and two in five (40%) healthcare and hospitality workers reporting the same. More than one in five (21%) healthcare workers have experienced or been threatened with physical aggression.
Among frontline workers who have taken sick leave, nine in ten (92%) say their job caused or worsened the health issues behind their absence, and more than half say those days could have been avoided with faster support after an incident or illness.
Without employers stepping in earlier, workers are left without help at the point they need it most, and the NHS is left to manage problems that could have been prevented. The risk is a circular culture of sickness: workers who cannot access timely support deteriorate, take longer absences, place greater pressure on NHS services, and become harder to bring back into work.
Young people are particularly pushing back on employer provision. Over half (52%) have considered changing jobs in the past 12 months due to poor health or wellbeing, almost one in four (23%) have considered reducing their hours, and 14% have considered leaving the workforce entirely for the same reasons. Looking ahead, 40% say they are considering changing jobs in the next year.
62% of young people say they could have avoided sick days with better or faster employer health support. The forms of help they value most are faster access to mental health support (48%) and faster access to a medical professional (44%). Eighty percent think it is important that their employer offers access to real people who can help with health or wellbeing issues.
The effects of absence ripple across whole teams. When colleagues are away, more than half (55%) of workers say it increases stress on the team, and nearly half (43%) have worked longer hours to cover, making burnout across the wider workforce more likely over time.
Keeping Britain working
The findings land as Andy Burnham prepares to set out his agenda for boosting economic growth, and follow fresh calls from Sir Charlie Mayfield that tackling Britain’s “quiet but urgent” long-term sickness challenge represents one of the country’s biggest untapped economic opportunities. While policy debate has largely focused on helping the nearly three million people already out of work due to long-term sickness return to employment, these findings point to an equally important opportunity: stopping millions more workers from falling out of work in the first place.
As a member of the Department for Work and Pensions’ Keep Britain Working Vanguard Taskforce, Sonder is working alongside employers, policymakers and health experts to identify practical solutions that help people stay healthy and productive in work.
