A recent research report has shown that personal debt has a direct impact on staff sickness. The report by Katherine Ashby and Michelle Mahdon of The Work Foundation, was commissioned by Axa PPP healthcare.
The authors suggest that three factors, two of which were work related, were significantly linked with higher levels of sickness presence. These included personal financial difficulties and work-related stress and perceived workplace pressure from senior managers, line managers and colleagues to attend work when unwell.
Employees with lower levels of perceived workplace pressure, lower work-related stress and fewer personal financial difficulties reported fewer days of sickness presence compared to those with higher levels of workplace pressure, work-related stress and greater financial difficulties.
Those employees who were finding it difficult to make ends meet, who were unable to save and who were worried a great deal about debt had a significantly higher number of sickness presence days than those without these problems.
Speaking at a seminar launching the report, Stephen Bevan, managing director of The Work Foundation said solutions could be simple, and offer real improvements to a company’s productivity. He referred to the case of an organisation with a workforce was mainly young people, many of whom are saddled with debt who had addressed the issue by offering financial advice in-house.