How much is staff absence costing the NHS? And what’s the cure?

Sickness absence within NHS England has been rising. But what’s the cost to the average NHS trust – and what can HR leaders do to bring their costs down?

NHS England recently reported an increase in sickness absence across NHS England – In December 2024, England’s overall sickness absence rate stood at 5.7%, marking an increase from 5.4% in November 2024 and a slight rise compared to 5.5% in December 2023.

The financial impact of sickness absence within NHS England is significant, especially when looking at mental health-related absences.

Building a healthier outlook

The NHS’s financial position continues to worsen. Local NHS systems overspent by around £1.4 billion in 2023–24 – more than twice the amount from the previous year – driven by increasing demand, underinvestment in facilities, inflationary pressures, and workforce challenges. Reducing staff absence by just 1% could save a typical acute trust up to £1 million.

Here’s the good news. There are practical steps NHS trusts can take to address absence – and by doing so, improve productivity and patient experience.

So, how do you drive down absence rates? With the right combination of human expertise and technological wizardry.

Step #1. Empower NHS line managers

People managers are the front line of HR. If the NHS is to reduce the incidence and cost of absenteeism, then its managers need to be capable and confident.

When managers are nervous of saying or doing the wrong thing, they’ll often choose to ignore an absence issue – or the early warning signs of one – rather than address it before it has a chance to escalate.

Such concerns are especially prevalent in cases of mental health-related absence, which accounts for around 15% of all sickness absence in the UK workforce – a figure that has continued to rise in recent years, particularly within the NHS. A big factor for this is employees feeling a lack of support from their manager or employer (45%).

Establishing a formal absence management process is crucial, but it isn’t enough.

Line managers need:

• To understand your absence management process, and how to apply it
• The confidence to manage and address absence effectively
• Timely support and coaching from experts in trust policies and employment law

If NHS trusts aren’t able to develop this support in-house, companies like our own can help. Employee Relations Managed Services can give managers a direct line to exactly this kind of targeted support and expertise, empowering them to drive resolutions, and minimise the impact of absence.

Step #2. Get proactive

Giving managers access to specialist expertise when they encounter an absence issue is a great start.

But once a manager has acted on that expert advice – whether it’s from the trust’s in-house HR team, or an external HR Business Partner – there’s a danger they’ll put off asking for help again. And in the meantime, the situation will deteriorate.

A better solution is to manage absence cases on behalf of line managers, reaching out to advise them on next steps, and nudge them into following up at exactly the right time. We’ve seen the value of such proactive support time and time again – and with the right technology, it can be delivered much more cost-effectively.

Step #3. Start pre-empting

If there’s one thing even better than resolving absences cases quickly and effectively, it’s preventing them occurring in the first place. This is where data is key. Modern HR technology and analytics can help NHS trusts to capture crucial absence-related data, and uncover absence trends and patterns.

The result is a virtuous circle: deep insights help to target effective support for managers, their confidence grows, more cases get opened, more data gets collected, and even deeper insights can be discovered.

The power of more effective absence management

Through more effective absence management we’ve been able to help organisations cut long term sickness by as much as 45%.

As we’ve seen, such a reduction could have a dramatic impact for any NHS trust – both in terms of costs and patient experience.

If you’d like to discuss anything in this article, please do get in touch please contact us via our website.