How does gender impact employee absence?
With International Women’s Day on 8th March, our latest eBook focuses on the gender absence gap. Employee sickness absence between men and women differs dramatically, and the reasons for it are wide-ranging, with no singular explanation as to why it happens.
The phenomenon exists around the world, particularly across European countries, and has been repeatedly noted in numerous studies and statistics gathered over the last few decades.
What are the possible reasons behind the gender absence gap?
Without one clear explanation for the gap between male and female employee absence levels, experts have considered lots of possible reasons that may be leading women to take more absence from work than men.
Health issues, including physical and mental health, is one of the leading reasons. Women are twice as likely as men to suffer from common mental health issues such as depression and anxiety, for example. They are also more likely to report those issues to their employer and seek treatment for it, potentially adding to the frequency and duration of time they take off work.
Other possible causes behind women employees taking more sickness absence includes childcare responsibilities, recovery time, ‘double work’ and general ‘life admin’ duties are just some of the contributing factors to the disparity between men and women’s sickness absence rates.
Our eBook dives into these reasons, as well as many more, to highlight some of the unique needs that both women and men may have when assessing their ability to carry out their jobs.
What can organisations do to address employee sickness absence?
Despite the differences and much-debated reasons for them, there are practical steps that organisations can take to address the gender absence gap.
Those steps can be in the form of significant investments in benefits packages, to smaller, easy-to-implement cultural and behavioural changes that go a long in way in making employees feel supported in the workplace.
Those changes might be as simple as offering free menstrual products, to providing mental health awareness workshops, to ensuring there are break rooms and plenty of natural light in office spaces.
To find out all the stats and get a list of practical steps to implement change in your organisation, download our free eBook below.
