Are French employees sicker than before or are they tired of their work? The results of a study published Thursday, August 31 by the firm WTW reveal that absenteeism has further increased in companies in 2022. It reached 5.3%, against 4.9% in 2021, 5.1% in 2020 , and 3.9% in 2019, the last year before the Covid pandemic. “Workers are 42% (compared to 34% in 2021) to have stopped at least one day during the year”, indicates the document. This survey was carried out using data from nominative social declarations (DSN) concerning 345,000 employees of nearly 650 private sector companies over a period of four years.
According to the WTW study, the trend observed in recent years is confirmed in 2022: new categories of staff, in particular managers, are increasingly affected. Sectors of activity, including software houses, finance and insurance, hitherto rather spared by the phenomenon of absenteeism, are also concerned. The increase is general, “regardless of age, sector, CSP, gender…” notes Noémie Marciano, a WTW manager, quoted in the study. However, it was stronger among employees under 40 (+16%), as well as among executives and intermediate professions (+14%), compared to an increase of 9% for all employees.
The new work organization in question?
The WTW firm suggests that one of the causes of the resurgence of absenteeism at work could be the new organizations of companies and, more broadly, of the post-Covid world of work. The firm does not have access to the causes of the arrests, but Noémie Marciano indicates that this could partly be explained by the increase in arrests for mental health problems observed by Social Security since the Covid-19 crisis.
“The new ways of working and organizations, very quickly adopted in companies [au début de la pandémie]have not been sufficiently supported for a large part [des salariés] (management of teleworking and the right to disconnect, welcoming new employees, support for digital transformation, distance training, etc.), she underlines.
In the public sector, too, the trend is upward
In an other study, published in early July, on behalf of the observatory of absenteeism in the public sector, the WTW firm also noted that public authorities are also faced with an upward trend in the absenteeism of their agents. In 2022, the absenteeism rate for ordinary illness (not particularly serious) amounts to 4.52%, up 12% compared to the previous year. Cumulated since 2016, the increase exceeds 28%.
However, the study puts this rate of absenteeism into perspective. And for good reason: the absences are relatively short and linked to pathologies that are not really serious. Nearly 46% of work stoppages are for a period of four to ten days, while they were 30% in 2021. According to the study, more than half of the people questioned justify their work stoppage by some form of burnout (60%), while 45% cite a lack of motivation and commitment.