Absence Calculator

Enter your total headcount rather than FTE.

Enter your company’s total annual salary bill, including non wage costs such as employers’ NI and pension contributions, and cost of employee benefits (typically these are 30% above wage costs but may vary for your business. Source: DWP 2013). If you don’t know your salary costs then we’ll calculate it based on the UK average gross annual salary of £28,200 (ONS 2016), plus £8,460 in non-wage costs. If your company only pays SSP, you can enter the maximum SSP liability of 28 weeks at £88.45 (£2,477) multiplied by your number of employees.

This is total absence time per annum divided by total working time available per annum (the latter is assumed to be 230 days, based on a full time employee working 5 days a week and 52 weeks in a year, less 22 days annual leave and 8 public holidays). We’ve entered the average rate for your industry sector (source: CIPD 2016), but you can enter your company’s actual rate if you know it.

Calculated by dividing total absence days per annum by number of employees. We’ve entered the average days for your industry sector (source: CIPD 2016), but you can enter the actual days for your company if you know them.

Research by Bevan & Hayday (2001) indicates that, on average, indirect costs are equal to a company’s direct costs. Indirect costs include: overtime or acting up allowances, temporary workers’ wages, absence administration, management time arranging cover or replacements, training temporary staff or replacements, lower productivity of temporary or returning staff and even lost customers.

There is little conclusive research in this area yet, but some commentators suggest Presenteeism due to ill health costs at least as much as absenteeism.

Do you already fund Occupational Health services, or adhoc private diagnosis and treatment for key workers? If so enter an estimate of the annual cost here, but don’t include any employee healthcare benefits that you have already counted in the ‘total annual salary bill’ box above.

Westfield Health customer, Boston College, achieved a 21% reduction in their absence rate as a result of implementing Westfield Health cover. You can read their case study on our website. Enter your target for absence reduction here.