Absence Rate

Absence rate is the share of scheduled working time lost because employees are absent, usually through sickness or other unplanned reasons, shown as a percentage: hours lost to absence divided by hours scheduled, times 100. In the UK, the Office for National Statistics put the sickness absence rate at 2.0% of working hours in 2025. The absence rate measures how much time is lost; absenteeism is the name for the pattern behind it, such as repeated short-notice sick calls.

What is absence rate?

Absence rate tells you how much working time your team is losing to people being off when they were expected to work.

Absence rate is usually the percentage of working hours (or days) lost because employees were absent, most often due to sickness or other unplanned reasons. The Office for National Statistics defines the sickness absence rate as the percentage of working hours lost because of sickness absence for people in employment.

Absence rate vs sickness absence vs absenteeism

These terms are often mixed up, so it helps to pin down what each one means.

The absence rate in your HR report may include a mix of reasons: sickness, family emergencies, unpaid leave and sometimes unauthorised absence. To keep your data meaningful, you should be clear which reasons are included in the calculation and which sit under normal “leave” such as holiday.

How to calculate absence rate

A clear formula is useful, but what really helps is using the same inputs every time so your numbers are comparable month to month (and across teams).

Absence rate (%) = (Total time lost to absence ÷ Total planned working time) × 100

Before you run the numbers, decide two things:

• Will you measure in hours or working days? (Hours is usually more accurate for shift work and part-time.)
  

• Are you tracking unplanned absence only, or “everything time away” as well? (Because what counts as protected/approved leave can vary by country and contract, it’s often smarter to keep that separate.)

The absence rate formula in hours and in days

Both versions divide what was lost by what was planned. Only the unit changes:

• In hours: absence rate = hours of absence ÷ scheduled hours × 100. This is how the ONS calculates its sickness absence rate, and it is the version to use when people work different shift lengths or part-time contracts.

• In days: absence rate = days of absence ÷ (number of employees × working days in the period) × 100. It is quicker to work out, but a day off counts the same for someone on a four-hour shift as for someone on a ten-hour shift.

For a shift team, the rota is the best source for the bottom half of the sum, because it shows who was expected to work and for how long. Count an absence only when the person was scheduled; a sick day on a day off is not lost time.

Worked example: absence rate for a restaurant team

A restaurant has 14 staff on the rota and schedules 1,820 hours over four weeks. Three servers call in sick for seven shifts between them, five of six hours and two of eight hours, which is 46 hours. A chef is off with a back injury for one week of five eight-hour shifts, another 40 hours.

Absence rate = (46 + 40) ÷ 1,820 × 100 = 86 ÷ 1,820 × 100 = 4.7%.

The 4.7% hides two different problems. The chef's 40 hours are one spell that the manager knew about from the first morning. The servers' 46 hours came as seven separate phone calls before service, each one a gap to fill at short notice. The frequency rate further down shows that difference.

Worked example: a monthly absence rate in days for a shop

A clothing shop has eight full-time sales assistants and 21 working days in March: 8 × 21 = 168 planned days. Two assistants are off sick for three days each and a third misses one day without telling anyone, so seven days are lost. Absence rate = 7 ÷ 168 × 100 = 4.2%.

The same formula works for one person. The assistant who missed one of her 21 days has an individual absence rate of 1 ÷ 21 × 100 = 4.8%. Before you compare the shop's 4.2% with a national figure, check what you counted: the ONS rate covers sickness only, while this one includes a day of unauthorised absence.

How to calculate the sickness absence rate

The sickness absence rate uses the same formula with only sickness and injury in the top half of the sum: hours lost to sickness ÷ hours scheduled × 100. Unauthorised absence and other unplanned reasons stay out, and so does planned leave. That makes your figure comparable with the ONS rate, which is the percentage of working hours lost because of sickness or injury. In the restaurant example all 86 hours were sickness, so its sickness absence rate is also 4.7%. In the shop it is 6 ÷ 168 × 100 = 3.6%.

Absence frequency and other measures next to the rate

The absence rate shows how much time was lost, not how often people were off. Three measures fill that gap:

• Frequency rate: the number of separate absence spells ÷ the number of employees × 100. In the restaurant, eight spells (seven sick calls and the chef's week) across 14 staff give a frequency rate of 57%.

• Days lost per employee: total days lost ÷ headcount. This is the measure behind the ONS figure of 4.4 days per worker in 2025.

• Bradford Factor: spells squared × days lost, per person. It weights frequent short absences heavily and is used to prompt a review conversation with one employee, not to describe a team.

When the frequency rate climbs while the absence rate stays flat, people are off more often for shorter spells. On a rota that is the harder problem, because every spell is a shift to cover at short notice.

What to count in the absence rate, and what to keep apart

Count the absence you did not plan for: sickness and injury, unauthorised absence and short-notice personal emergencies. Leave out time that was agreed in advance, such as holiday, bank holidays, training, and maternity, paternity or adoption leave.

Some absence belongs in your records but not in the figures you use for absence triggers. Acas advises employers to record pregnancy-related sickness separately from other sickness absence and not to count it towards review or trigger points, and disability-related absence needs the same care where adjustments are in play. Time off after a miscarriage or another pregnancy loss, which many employers give as reproductive loss leave, is best kept as its own absence type for the same reason.

US benchmarks are built differently. The Bureau of Labor Statistics counts maternity and paternity leave, child care and civic duty among its reasons for absence, and leaves out vacation and holidays, so a US absence figure is not the same thing as a UK sickness absence rate.

In Shiftbase the schedule already holds the planned hours, and sick reports and leave are registered under absence types, so sickness, holiday and other leave stay apart without a second spreadsheet.

What is a good absence rate?

Benchmarks will not run your business, but they help you spot when absence is becoming a real risk.

UK and US absence rate benchmarks

In the UK, the Office for National Statistics reports a sickness absence rate of 2.0% in 2025, unchanged from 2024. That is 148.8 million working days lost, or 4.4 days per worker. The rate was 2.9% in the public sector and 1.7% in the private sector, 2.8% for part-time workers against 1.9% for full-time workers, and ranged from 1.0% for managers and directors to 3.3% for process, plant and machine operatives.

CIPD’s Health and Wellbeing at Work survey for 2023 found an average of 7.8 days of absence per employee, or 3.4% of working time. That figure is reported by employers and covers every reason for absence, so it runs higher than the ONS figure for sickness alone.

In the US, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports an absence rate of 3.2% for full-time wage and salary workers in 2025, an average over eleven months because October 2025 was not collected during the federal government shutdown. That rate is the share of workers with an absence in the survey week, not the share of hours. The hours-based figure, the lost worktime rate, was 1.7%, and that is the one to compare with your own absence rate. The BLS absence rate was 3.4% in accommodation and food services and in retail trade, and 4.0% for food preparation and serving occupations.

Absence benchmarks at a glance

What “good” looks like in practice

For many employers, a sickness absence rate around 2% is considered “healthy”, while 3–4% may be normal in physically demanding or customer-facing work. Some HR advisers suggest aiming for an absenteeism rate of around 1.5% in stable periods, accepting that it will rise during bad flu or COVID seasons.

However, a “good” absence rate is not just a number. A low rate can hide presenteeism (people working while ill) and leaveism (using holiday or working unpaid to keep up), which UK research now links to over £100bn a year in lost productivity.

For a hospitality or retail business in the UK, two yardsticks matter more than any rule of thumb: the private-sector rate of 1.7% and your own trend over the last 12 to 24 months. The restaurant in the example above, at 4.7% over four weeks, is well above the first. Whether that is a problem depends on the second, because one chef with a back injury can lift a small team's rate for a month.

A more realistic goal is a stable absence rate for your sector, combined with healthy utilisation, manageable workload and no red flags in staff surveys about stress, burnout or unfair treatment.

Main drivers of absence

Understanding the main causes of absence helps you focus your efforts where they will actually make a difference.

Health and wellbeing

Health issues remain the number one driver of sickness absence. In the ONS figures for 2025, minor illnesses such as colds and stomach bugs were the most common reason, at 30.4% of occurrences, followed by musculoskeletal problems (14.6%), mental health conditions (8.9%) and gastrointestinal problems (6.6%). Workers with a long-term health condition lost 4.0% of their hours to sickness, against 1.0% for those without one.

CIPD’s 2023 report highlights mental ill health and stress as the top causes of long-term absence, with workloads and management style often in the background. In the US, mental health-related absence is estimated to cost tens of billions of dollars a year, with employees who rate their mental health as “fair” or “poor” taking nearly four times more unplanned absences than others.

Presenteeism is also a hidden driver: people who keep working while “ill-ish” tend to stay sick longer, spread illness to colleagues and eventually contribute to higher overall absence and lower productivity.

Work design and scheduling

The way you schedule work has a direct impact on absenteeism rate and tardiness. Research on more than 28 million time cards for US retail workers found that inconsistent schedules (changing days of the week or start times by more than an hour) were strongly linked to lateness and absence, with 16% of those shifts either late or missed.

Long hours, frequent overtime and unpredictable rotas also increase fatigue and the likelihood of short-notice call-outs, especially in shift-based roles such as hospitality, retail and manufacturing.

Hybrid and remote work have changed the pattern rather than removing absence. When people cannot easily switch to working from home, they are more likely to record a full sick day instead of working part of the day, particularly for milder illnesses.

Personal and family pressures

A growing share of employee absenteeism is linked to caring responsibilities and life admin, not just illness. US data suggests more than 44,000 workers a month call off due to childcare shortages, and millions of absences each year are logged as “other family or personal obligations”, including elder care, transport problems or unexpected crises.

In both the UK and US, employers also report increasing time off due to mental health, financial stress, and wider social issues, particularly among lower-paid workers. These factors often show up as short, repeated spells of absence, which can be easy to label as “poor attendance” but may signal deeper wellbeing and workload problems.

Before you act on a high absence rate

Quick compliance checklist for managers

Use this simple checklist before you label someone’s absence rate as a performance issue:

1. Check what is included Is this sickness absence rate, overall absence, or does it include holiday and other planned leave?

2. Separate protected leave UK: identify disability-related and pregnancy-related absence and consider reasonable adjustments. US: check whether any of the time off could qualify as FMLA leave or ADA accommodation.

3. Review policies and local laws Confirm your absence policy matches current national law and, in the US, any relevant state or city sick leave rules.

4. Look at patterns, not just totals Are absences clustered around certain shifts, managers, roles or times of year? That may signal workload or scheduling issues rather than individual behaviour.

5. Document conversations and support Keep clear records of return-to-work meetings, adjustments offered and support signposted before moving to warnings or capability processes.

How managers should use absence rate 

Absence rate is a sharp tool; useful when handled with care, risky when used in isolation.

Focus on patterns and causes, not just a single number

A “high” sickness absence rate can mean many different things: flu season, poor shift planning, a stressful manager, or a cluster of long-term conditions. CIPD stresses that employers should look at trends and underlying causes rather than treating absence statistics as a disciplinary trigger on their own.

Start by breaking the absence rate down by team, role, location and shift pattern, then compare it to your own last 12–24 months rather than only to national averages. Acas also encourages employers to use absence data to spot patterns (for example, frequent Mondays, specific managers or job types) so they can tackle root causes such as workload, job design or flexibility.

Combine absence rate with other people metrics

Absence rate sits alongside presenteeism, leaveism, turnover and engagement. CIPD’s wellbeing research shows high sickness absence often runs together with stress, burnout and lower productivity.

If your absence rate is low but overtime, near-misses, complaints or staff turnover are high, people may be coming in when they are unwell or working unsustainable hours. Conversely, a higher but stable absence rate with strong engagement scores and low turnover may be perfectly acceptable.

A simple rule of thumb: treat absence rate as a conversation starter, not a verdict. Use it in management meetings to ask “What is going on here?” rather than “Who is at fault?”.

Use fair triggers and structured conversations

Many organisations use absence triggers (for example, X days or Y episodes in Z months) to prompt a review meeting. UK guidance is increasingly clear that these triggers should be applied flexibly, especially for disabled employees and pregnancy-related absence. Recent tribunal decisions against NHS trusts show that dismissing staff mainly because of high disability-related absence, without proper adjustments or forward-looking assessment, can be discriminatory.

Before you move to warnings or capability procedures, you should:

1. Review the pattern and reasons for absence.

2. Check whether any of the absence could be disability-related, pregnancy-related or protected leave.

3. Hold a return-to-work or welfare meeting to listen, not just deliver a script.

4. Consider adjustments to work, schedule or role.

Mini case studies

Seeing how other employers handle absence makes it easier to shape your own approach.

• Centrica: proactive health support cuts absence

  Energy company Centrica has invested heavily in occupational health to stop sickness absence turning into long-term worklessness. When an engineer reports sick with a back issue, they can be referred to physiotherapy within five days; call-centre staff under stress are offered mental health support within 48 hours. An absence triggers a structured questionnaire on lifestyle and health risks, which feeds into tailored support.

  Centrica reports that this proactive, early-intervention system has significantly reduced sickness absence and become a tool for attracting talent, because employees see support rather than punishment when they are unwell.

  👉 Takeaway for managers: fast, practical help (physio, counselling, GP access) often reduces both length and frequency of sickness absence far more effectively than strict absence warnings.

• NHS trust: high absence, unfair dismissal

  In Kitching v University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust, an employee had an astonishing 406 days of sickness absence over four years on 29 occasions. The Trust dismissed her largely on the basis of her historic absence record. The Employment Tribunal found the dismissal unfair and discriminatory, partly because the Trust failed to treat her as disabled, did not adjust its absence triggers and focussed on past absence instead of future capability with reasonable adjustments.

  Another recent case against Frimley Health NHS Foundation Trust involved a disabled worker dismissed after sickness absence while waiting for reasonable adjustments. The Tribunal ordered the Trust to pay over £70,000 in compensation for disability discrimination and for giving a damaging reference.

  👉 Takeaway for managers: even where the absence rate for one person is very high, you must separate disability-related absence from general absence, seek occupational health input and consider adjustments before dismissal. Numbers alone are not enough.

• Wellness and flexible working reducing absenteeism

  A Department of Labor-sponsored review of workplace wellness programmes in the US found that employers who combined health promotion (e.g. activity challenges, screenings) with targeted support (e.g. coaching for high-risk staff) often saw measurable reductions in sickness absence and healthcare costs over time. Case studies in the report include firms that cut average sick days and improved self-reported health after sustained wellness efforts.

  More recent European research and practitioner case studies show similar patterns: organisations that invest in evidence-based wellbeing support and flexible working report lower absenteeism and higher retention, especially in roles with high stress or physical strain.

  👉 Takeaway for managers: structured wellness initiatives and flexible work options can be central to lowering absenteeism rate and keeping people healthy enough to work.