An industry claim doing the rounds says UK sickness absence has hit 9.4 days a year, the highest it's been in over fifteen years, though nobody involved says which year the counting actually happened. This includes practices like yours, especially if your clients are the sort who need a duvet day before they need you.
Practices working with stressed-out employees are being handed a fifteen-year-high absence figure, but the people handing it over haven't said who counted, or when.
| Original Research | A claim that UK sickness absence has reached its highest point in more than fifteen years, presented without a visible source. |
|---|---|
| Source | https://www.cipd.org/uk/knowledge/reports/health-well-being-work/ |
| Overview | CIPD's page hosts general guidance for HR professionals on managing workplace wellbeing, though the specific absence figure quoted here doesn't appear tied to any dated CIPD survey published there. |
| Year | Not disclosed |
| Publisher | Industry body, CIPD (Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development) |
| Relevance to Wellbeing | Speaks to a genuine demand story around stress-related time off, but the headline number itself can't be traced to a named CIPD survey, report, or date. |
| Our Verdict | Too early to tell The 9.4-days figure turns up with no survey, sample size, or date attached, so it's best treated as a rumour with good posture. |
| Our Summary |
|
| Our Geo View | UK-specific data; absence patterns and workplace-support norms differ elsewhere, so this figure doesn't travel well. |
A claim that UK sickness absence has reached its highest point in over fifteen years, with no visible citation behind it.
CIPD's workplace wellbeing guidance page, undated. The 9.4-day figure doesn't appear anywhere on that page with a source attached.
Credibility flags: methodology not disclosed, sample size not disclosed, publisher type is a recognised industry body, but this particular stat isn't tied to any public CIPD survey or report.
A relevance score out of 100, built from three things: how well it fits the six practice types, how recent it is, and how solid the methodology behind it is.
It's marked down heavily on how solid the method is, treated cautiously on recency since there's no date to check it against, and rated only middling on practice fit, given this is workplace-wide data rather than anything specific to the six practice types.
| Practice type | Relevance | Recommended action |
|---|---|---|
| Coaching | Medium | Reference the general stress trend, skip the specific figure. |
| Therapy | High | Use the demand narrative in outreach, with a footnote that the number's unverified. |
| Training | Medium | Useful hook for corporate wellness pitches, cited cautiously. |
| Alternative Healing | Low | Interesting context, not worth building a campaign around. |
| Clinical | Medium | Handy for framing referral conversations with employers. |
| Retreat/Centre | Low | Nice mood music, not a stat to lean your marketing on. |
Best before: revisit this if CIPD ever publishes a dated survey with this exact figure attached, or replace it with a properly sourced number courtesy of Sunlight Creations.
Most practices have felt the pull of a big, scary absence statistic that sounds true enough not to question.
A good sign. We have an ecosystem, a visual river and a story garden that have been waiting for a practice like yours. Come and find out what we mean - the coffee's hot and the discovery call goes properly both ways.
≡