Office notebook. There are slightly more employees in the office. The general decline in absenteeism observed in the spring by the Malakoff Humanis studies and the Diot-Siaci Social Performance Observatory was confirmed on Thursday, September 5, for the private sector.
The 2024 Willis Towers Watson (WTW) Absenteeism Barometer, constructed from the nominative social declarations (DSN) of 420,280 employees from 2,196 companies over a five-year period, shows an absenteeism rate of 4.8% in 2023 compared to 5.4% a year earlier. Without being the big return to the office with a rate of 3.8% as in 2019, there are already slightly fewer absentees than in recent years; 94% of absences in 2023 are due to illness.
It is the absences of less than three months that are falling compared to 2022, the year of the Omicron variant wave. Absences of four to seven days have almost halved. The proportion of employees who stop at least one day in the year has fallen from 43% to 34%. Previous studies had seen the impact of teleworking, which reduces the number of short absences, to the extent that teleworkers choose to continue their activity remotely rather than taking leave when they are not too sick.
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The WTW study which identifies the “populations at risk” et “potential causes”in other words who are absent and why, notes that the reduction in absences in 2023 is thus less marked for women (– 8%), overrepresented in non-teleworkable activities in the health or hotel and catering sectors, than for men (– 12%). On the other hand, it concerns all sectors of activity and all socio-professional categories at different levels. The absenteeism rate for managers is 2.3% and that of workers is 6.9% with longer durations (twenty-eight days of absence on average) “linked to the arduousness of certain jobs”specifies WTW.
Friday, the day of empty offices
The study also notes that the less stable the employment status, the less absenteeism: 2.1% absenteeism in fixed-term contracts compared to 5% in permanent contracts, and that Friday remains the day of empty offices. The increase in the absenteeism rate is surprisingly continuous throughout the week: Monday 4.8%, Tuesday 4.9%, Wednesday and Thursday 5% and 5.1% on Friday. On this point, “Unfortunately, we have no qualitative explanations.”comments a WTW spokesperson. Enough to fuel the questions of the most suspicious employers.
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