The pandemic led to a peak in days of absence last year. The health insurance company AOK has determined this for its insured persons. In addition to respiratory infections, mental illnesses also played a major role.
Occupational absences are at a new high: This is evident from the AOK’s 2023 absence report, which has now been published. According to this, the health insurance company recorded 216.6 cases of sick leave per 100 employed insured people last year. From 2012 to 2021 there was an average of 159.7 cases.
This increase of more than 30 percent was primarily caused by respiratory diseases, also as a result of the corona pandemic. In 2022, there were 86.5 sick notes per 100 insured people; in the previous year there were 36.3 cases.
Higher Incapacity rate
The incapacity rate, which relates the proportion of sick employees to all employees, averaged 5.4 percent in 2020 and 2021. Last year it rose to 6.7 percent.
There were similarly high values in the first half of 2023, but they fell again from April onwards, said Johanna Baumgardt from the AOK Scientific Institute (WIdO), when presenting the study: “How absenteeism will change over the course of the year against the background of increasing Covid -19 infections and the usual seasonal peak of respiratory diseases remains to be seen.”
Days of absence due to mental illnesses also reached a high in 2022. According to statistics, they have increased by 48 percent since 2012. As the AOK explained, mental illnesses are associated with particularly long absences.
More complaints about psychological stress
Many employees in Germany complain about psychological stress in connection with their work. According to the study, around 78 percent cited exhaustion, 75 percent anger and annoyance, and 66 percent listlessness as complaints. The values have fallen slightly compared to previous years, the peak phase of the corona pandemic. But they are higher than before the pandemic.
Looking at the different professional fields, the data showed that employees in the health and social services are particularly affected by mental illnesses. In this industry, 14 percent of all days of incapacity for work occur in this area. Employees from the “education and teaching, public administration/social insurance” and “banking/insurance” sectors were only slightly less affected. Across all sectors, the average value was ten percent.
“Sustainable” companies have fewer absences
Psychological stress is often accompanied by changes and uncertainty at work. 47 percent of employees stated that they had noticed strong to very strong changes in their company, both as a result of the consequences of the pandemic and as a result of technological developments.
35 percent of those surveyed have a pronounced fear of the future regarding the situation in society as a whole, but only eight percent have fears about their employer. Companies that are considered to be sustainable by their employees have fewer absences from work: these employees say they were absent an average of 11.6 days due to illness in the last twelve months before the survey. For employees who rated their future viability worse, the average was 16.2 days.
The absence report has been published annually since 1998 by the AOK Scientific Institute (WIdO) in collaboration with Bielefeld University and the Berlin University of Technology.