The time spent on sick leave, temporary unemployment, career breaks and holidays during working hours was slightly lower in 2023 than in previous years.
Acerta concludes this from data from approximately 390,000 employees employed by 30,000 private companies. Since 2018, the sample has been measuring how many days employees are available, whether or not they work from home. There was a dip during the pandemic, after which the number of days worked increased slightly.
On average, employees worked 83.3 percent of the time last year. For a full-time employee that is about 208 days a year. In 2018 it was 82.2 percent, in 2022 it was 82.4 percent.
So it is not a matter of large increases, but of a slightly increasing evolution.
This is mainly because fewer career breaks and time credits are taken. The rules for this have therefore been tightened. In 2018, career breaks and time credit accounted for 3.2 percent of absences, in 2023 this was 2.3 percent.
“It also seems plausible that people are more present than before the pandemic because many also work from home,” says Dirk Vanderhoydonck, expert at Acerta. “This makes it easier to combine work and private life, which may mean that employees apply for less time credit.”
Illness remains the biggest reason for absence. In 2023, an average of 7.9 percent of working hours will therefore not be worked, good for about 20 sick days in a year. That is less than in 2022 (8.4 percent) and the same as in 2018.
Absenteeism is a point of attention, especially in large companies. There, with an average of 24 days per working year, it is twice as high as in SMEs. “Also worrying is the large share of absences due to illness of more than a year at the largest employers,” says Vanderhoydonck. “That takes a bite of almost 4.5 percent out of availability.”
The results seem contradictory to other news. This is what Riziv figures show The time a 43 percent increase in five years in the number of workers who are absent for a year or more due to burnout or depression. But these figures include the self-employed, for whom the increase is also the greatest. They are not included in the Acerta investigation.
It also recently emerged that the number of one-day absences increased by 44 percent in larger companies last year. Since November 2022, a sick note is no longer required for one day of illness.
“But we mainly see a shift that net amounts to more presence. There is more absenteeism for one day, but absenteeism for two days to a week is decreasing,” says professor of occupational medicine Lode Godderis (KU Leuven).
“The Acerta research provides a general, average picture,” responds Sonja Teughels of business organization VOKA. “Fortunately that is stable. But below that average there are various developments that partly cancel each other out. There are more flexi-jobs and more flexibility at work, which means that some people work more and others less.”
