Understanding and Managing Absence Rate: The Complete Employers Guide

In this article, we will guide you through understanding the concept of absence rate, how to calculate it, identify the causes of employee absenteeism, analyze its consequences, and explore strategies to effectively reduce absenteeism within your organization.

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.

Metric / term	What it measures in practice	Typical use in HR analytics
Absence rate	% of working time lost because staff were not at work when scheduled	High-level KPI for resource planning and labour costs
Sickness absence rate	% of working time lost specifically to sickness or injury	Benchmarking against ONS, CIPD or sector averages
Absenteeism rate	Often used like “absence rate”, but usually with a focus on problematic or avoidable absence	Identifying patterns such as Monday/Friday absences
Presenteeism	People working while unwell and under-performing	Understanding hidden productivity loss and wellbeing risks
Leaveism	People using annual leave or working outside hours to catch up on workload	Spotting pressure and workload issues that do not appear in raw absence data

⚠️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, consistent formula makes it easier to compare absence across teams, months or countries.

The most common formula for absence rate is:

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

You can work in days or hours, as long as you stay consistent. Using hours is often more accurate for part-time staff or shift workers, and it lines up with how ONS expresses sickness absence as working hours lost.

Step-by-step: calculate absence rate for one month

Choose your period and group
Decide which month (or quarter) you are measuring and whether you are looking at the whole organisation, one site or one team.
Add up planned working time
Count the total number of hours your employees were scheduled or contracted to work in that period (for example, from contracts, rota or standard hours).
Add up time lost to absence
Sum the hours lost where people were absent for included reasons, such as sickness, injury, childcare emergencies or other unplanned absence. Make sure you do not include annual leave or bank holidays if you want to compare with official sickness absence benchmarks.
Apply the formula
Divide the absence hours by the planned hours and multiply by 100 to get a percentage.

Imagine a team of 20 full-time employees, each contracted for 160 hours in April (roughly 4 weeks × 40 hours).
- Total planned working time = 20 × 160 = 3,200 hours
- Total hours lost to sickness and other unplanned absence in April = 128 hours
Apply the formula:
- Absence rate = (128 ÷ 3,200) × 100 = 4%
A 4% absence rate means 4 out of every 100 planned working hours were lost that month because employees were absent when scheduled. You can repeat the same method for individual departments, job roles or locations to see where absence is higher and where it is under control.

If you operate across countries, you can still use this basic formula, but you may need separate views for sickness absence rate, overall absence rate and protected leave (for example, pregnancy-related absence or disability-related absence under the Equality Act in the UK).

💡If you do not want to calculate all of this by hand, you can track absences, time off balances and absence percentages automatically with Shiftbase, using its absence policies, time-off balances and absence reports that pull data directly from your schedules and timesheets.

What is a good absence rate?

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

Typical benchmarks in 2023–2025

Across advanced economies, a sickness absence rate between about 2% and 4% is now common, with big differences between sectors and job types. In the UK, the Office for National Statistics reports a sickness absence rate of 2.0% in 2024, equal to around 4.4 days lost per worker per year.

CIPD’s Health and Wellbeing at Work survey found UK employees were absent 7.8 days per employee per year (3.4% of working time) in 2023 – the highest level for over a decade, driven strongly by stress and mental health.

In the US, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports a national absence rate of 3.2% for full-time workers in 2024, with higher absenteeism in healthcare support and other frontline roles than in professional services.

Typical sickness absence rates UK vs US, 2023–2024:

Location / metric	Latest figure (approx.)
UK sickness absence rate	2.0% of working hours, 4.4 days/year
UK average absence (all reasons)	7.8 days per employee (3.4%)
US absence rate (full-time)	3.2% overall

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.

👉 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.

Treat benchmarks as a sense-check, not a performance target. Start by comparing your own absence rate over the last 12–24 months and by looking at differences between teams, roles and locations.

If one team is at 6% absence while the rest sit around 2–3%, that is usually more important than whether your global figure is slightly above a national average. Use sickness absence rate, overall absenteeism rate, and simple “days lost per FTE” to build a balanced view rather than relying on one KPI.

You should also separate protected leave (such as pregnancy-related absence or disability-related sickness) from general “attendance issues”, so you do not fall into legal risk when you act on high numbers.

💡If you want cleaner benchmarks without spreadsheets, you can use Shiftbase’s absence management and reporting tools to track different absence types, see total hours lost per team, and compare trends over time using reports like Requests, Balance details and the Report dashboard.

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. ONS data shows that in 2024, UK workers most often cited minor illnesses such as colds and stomach bugs (around a third of absences), followed by musculoskeletal problems, mental health conditions and respiratory illnesses.

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 manufacturing, logistics and healthcare.

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.

Legal and compliance snapshot

Absence rate is not just a performance metric – it has direct links to equality, health and safety and leave laws in each country.

In the UK, the Equality Act 2010 requires employers to make reasonable adjustments for disabled workers so they are not placed at a substantial disadvantage, which includes how you handle disability-related absence.

Acas guidance explains that disability-related absence should usually be recorded separately from general sickness and taken into account before any disciplinary action, and that you may need to adjust absence “triggers” or targets for disabled staff.

Pregnancy-related sickness needs special care too. If an employee is off work due to a pregnancy-related illness in the four weeks before their due date, maternity leave may start automatically, and maternity pay rather than sick pay will normally apply.

In practice, this means that treating all high absence numbers in the same way is risky. You should separate:
- Ordinary short-term sickness,
- Long-term illness,
- Disability-related absence, and
- Pregnancy-related absence,
  and make reasonable adjustments before considering capability or dismissal.
In the US, there is no single federal law guaranteeing paid sick leave for most workers. However, the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) gives eligible employees of covered employers up to 12 weeks of job-protected unpaid leave for certain family and medical reasons, including serious health conditions and caring responsibilities.

At the same time, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) may require you to treat time off as a reasonable accommodation for disabled employees, which can affect how you apply attendance policies and absence triggers.

On top of this, more than 20 US states (plus many cities and counties) now have their own paid sick leave laws, each with different rules on accrual, caps, carry-over and who is covered. Because these rules change regularly, multi-state employers are expected to monitor local requirements and update policies accordingly.

For compliance purposes, the key point is that “high absence” cannot automatically be treated as misconduct where the time off is protected under FMLA, ADA or state/local sick leave rules. You need to know why the time off occurred before taking disciplinary action.

✅ Quick compliance checklist for managers

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

Check what is included
1. Is this sickness absence rate, overall absence, or does it include holiday and other planned leave?
Separate protected leave
1. UK: identify disability-related and pregnancy-related absence and consider reasonable adjustments.
2. US: check whether any of the time off could qualify as FMLA leave or ADA accommodation.
Review policies and local laws
1. Confirm your absence policy matches current national law and, in the US, any relevant state or city sick leave rules.
Look at patterns, not just totals
1. Are absences clustered around certain shifts, managers, roles or times of year? That may signal workload or scheduling issues rather than individual behaviour.
Document conversations and support
1. Keep clear records of return-to-work meetings, adjustments offered and support signposted before moving to warnings or capability processes.

💡Shiftbase gives you a clear audit trail of absences, time-off balances and worked hours, plus tools like absence types, time-off balance rules and balance expiration that help you separate different kinds of leave and keep your policies aligned with local rules.

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.

Smart use of absence rate	Risky use of absence rate
Comparing trends over time and between teams	Treating one month’s spike as proof of “poor attitude”
Linking data to causes (health, workload, rota, management)	Ignoring causes and jumping straight to warnings or sanctions
Separating protected leave (disability, pregnancy, FMLA, etc.)	Counting all absence the same, regardless of legal protection
Using data to improve schedules, wellbeing and support	Using data only to “name and shame” or rank employees
Combining with other metrics (turnover, engagement, overtime)	Using absence rate as the only KPI for performance

👉 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:

Review the pattern and reasons for absence.
Check whether any of the absence could be disability-related, pregnancy-related or protected leave.
Hold a return-to-work or welfare meeting to listen, not just deliver a script.
Consider adjustments to work, schedule or role.

💡Shiftbase can help managers do this fairly by giving clear absence histories, absence types and reports filtered by team, contract type or absence reason – so you are looking at the right context before you decide what action to take.

Mini case studies

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

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.
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.
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 are not just “nice to have” perks – they can be central to lowering absenteeism rate and keeping people healthy enough to work.

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How Shiftbase helps you turn absence data into better decisions

Absence rate is only useful if you can actually see what is happening in your team, day by day. That is exactly where Shiftbase comes in.

With employee scheduling, you can build clear rotas for every department and team, so you always know who was planned to work and where gaps appear when someone calls in sick. Because planning, time tracking and absence management are connected in one platform, your absence rate is based on real schedules and approved hours, not guesswork.

Managers get an instant overview of absences, time-off balances and plus/minus hours, which makes it easier to spot patterns such as one team with higher sickness absence, or frequent short absences around certain shifts. At the same time, employees can request time off via the web or mobile app, so you reduce ad-hoc messages and keep a clean audit trail for compliance.

If you want to move away from spreadsheets and manual absence calculations, you can try Shiftbase with a free 14-day trial and see how connected scheduling, time tracking and absence management can simplify your workforce planning.

Frequently Asked Questions

Not always, but it deserves a closer look. In many UK and US organisations, sickness absence rates around 2–3% are typical, with higher levels in physically demanding or public-facing roles. A consistent 5%+ sickness absence rate, or a sudden jump, is a sign to check causes, patterns and workload, rather than a reason to punish staff automatically.
For normal benchmarking, no. Official statistics from the ONS and BLS exclude annual leave and bank holidays and focus on sickness and other unplanned absences. Internally, you can track overall time off if you find it useful, but keep “sickness absence rate” separate so you can compare with external data and avoid confusing holiday with sickness.
Most organisations review absence monthly at HR or leadership level, and more frequently where there are known issues. CIPD suggests using absence data as part of regular people reporting for line managers, who in many organisations already take primary responsibility for managing short- and long-term absence. A quarterly “deep dive” by team, role and location can help you link absence to rota design, workload and wellbeing.
- Absence rate measures total time lost (e.g. hours or days).
- The Bradford factor gives a score based on how often people are absent, weighting frequent short absences more heavily than a few long ones.
CIPD and Acas note that Bradford factor scores should not be used in a mechanical way, especially where disability or pregnancy-related absence is involved, and should always be combined with manager judgement and medical input.
First, check whether disability, pregnancy or another protected reason explains some or all of the absence. Under the UK Equality Act, employers must make reasonable adjustments, which may include adjusting absence triggers, changing hours or duties, or recording disability-related absence separately. In the US, FMLA and ADA protections may also apply to some or all of the time off.

You should seek occupational health or medical advice where appropriate, document conversations and support, and only consider dismissal once you have explored adjustments and future capability, not just past absence numbers.
Several studies and employer surveys suggest that flexible working – when well designed – can reduce sickness absence and improve retention, mainly by reducing stress and improving work–life balance. However, unpredictable or last-minute rota changes have the opposite effect, increasing lateness and absence in shift-based jobs.