As one might expect, the pandemic made 2020 and 2021 unique years for workers calling in sick, but employee attendance has long proven a nettlesome issue for employers. The average number of sick days per employee annually is 5.2, and one in four workers admit to being late for work at least once per month. Survey data indicates that an average of 1.5 million workers per month missed work due to personal illness in 2020.
Absent and tardy employees result in over $225 billion in lost productivity each year. Absenteeism has significant and costly effects, such as diminished product quality or business services and weakened employee morale among those employees forced to pick up the slack for missing workers. A SHRM study found that on average, supervisors spend between four and five hours per week dealing with absences. That equals more than five weeks per year of a supervisor’s time!