Two thirds of businesses unable to count cost of COVID-19 on workforce

• 69% of companies have no way to track cost of employee absence
• 1 in 3 companies still rely on paper spreadsheets for employee wellbeing

London, Nottingham, UK. 30th June, 2020: More than two-thirds of business leaders across the UK have no idea how much employee sickness is costing their business, according to e-days, the absence intelligence platform.

The findings come from an exclusive survey of 100 senior HR executives from well-known global brands by e-days. Of the respondents, one in three still tracked their staff absence manually, using spreadsheets or paper-based forms.

The news comes as businesses plan a gradual return to the workplace after the end of lockdown. There are fears that this will have created added pressure via a filing backlog in manual spreadsheets and absence forms.

When asked about whether absenteeism is a topic for senior board level, a third of respondents said that it was not discussed in the business.

Absence intelligence has emerged as a new priority during the Covid-19 crisis. Last year, 141m working days were lost due to sickness or injury in the UK, and the impact of Covid-19 is likely to have had a significant impact on this figure when measures like furlough are taken into account.

“An organisation of 1,000 people will save £170,000 per month by taking a proactive approach to cutting absence durations and resolving tricky cases,” said Steve Arnold, CEO of e-days. “In addition to the financial element, it’s really important for leaders to understand their employee wellbeing now more than ever, with the growth of mental health issues and associated Covid-19 related issues.

“It’s astonishing that staff absence tracking is still a paper-based process in many large organisations, when patterns and trends here are so important to spot warning signs in individuals and teams – and for businesses to focus on productivity at this difficult time.”

For further insights on this topic, check out the webinar: ‘Why sickness management must be your #1 HR priority’, presented by e-days in association with ASOS.

ENDS

About e-days
Founded by CEO Steve Arnold and CTO Chris Moseley, e-days is an award-winning, cloud-based absence management and intelligence platform that makes holiday and absence management easy and accurate for organisations of all sizes, anywhere in the world. e-days delivers for more than 1,500 customers across 120 countries, including brands such as Canon, ASOS, AXA, Monster Energy, Barclays, and Sony.

The e-days mission is to provide organisations with key intelligence regarding staff absence – enabling them to build better staff management and wellbeing strategies. Absence intelligence allows businesses to achieve better resourcing insights, save time and money associated with employee absence, and promote excellent employee wellbeing and better health for organisational success.

Website: https://www.e-days.com
Twitter: @edayssoftware

Press enquiries
For all media requests, please contact Edward Clark:
eclark@thecommsco.com// 0203 697 6680

Source: RealWire