What is absence management support?
Absence management is ongoing clinical support to help employees who are off sick return to work safely, and to reduce how often and how long absence happens.
It supports an ongoing relationship with your HR team to keep more of your people in work and bring others back sooner.
You receive clinical guidance; the decisions on duties, adjustments or any process remain with you.
Meet the clinical team →How the support works
Structured and clinical, built around a safe, sustainable return to work.
Refer early
Refer as soon as an absence looks likely to be prolonged or recurrent.
Clinical assessment
Our clinician assesses the employee's health, the barriers to work and the likely prognosis, by video, phone or in person.
Advice you can act on
A plain-language report on fitness, likely timescales and any adjustments, including whether the Equality Act 2010 is likely to apply.
Reports within 72 hours of the appointmentReturn-to-work plan
Practical, time-bound steps: a phased return, adjusted duties and the support agreed with the employee.
Manager and HR support
Guidance on next steps and on the conversation with the employee.
Review and reduce
We stay involved through complex or long-term cases and report what is driving absence.
Reducing absence across your organisation
Alongside individual cases, we help you tackle the causes and the hardest cases at an organisational level.
Complex case management
We convene case conferences with HR, the manager, the employee and our clinician to agree a way forward on entrenched absence.
Ill-health retirement
Where a return to work is not achievable, our OH physician provides clear, impartial assessment against your pension scheme's criteria, including Teachers' Pensions and the LGPS.
Referral-pathway design
We work with HR to design when and how absence triggers a referral, so problems are caught earlier and handled consistently and fairly across the organisation.
Absence analytics
Anonymised, aggregate insight into the patterns and causes driving your absence – by team, condition and time of year.
Estimate the cost of sickness absence
The calculator estimates your organisation's annual cost of sickness absence and models the saving from reducing it.
Your organisation
Average sickness days per employee per year
Cost by cause
The starting split uses the ONS 2025 shares of sickness absence occurrences.
Drag a handle, or select it and use the arrow keys, to change the split.
Model a reduction
A reduction of 1 day per employee is estimated to save
£20,192
The saving uses the true cost at 1.5 times the direct cost. The direct saving is £13,462.
Discuss your figures with us
The enquiry form opens with your number of employees and sickness days filled in. We answer enquiries within 3 working hours.
How the estimate is calculated
- True cost multiplies the direct cost by 1.5 by default, adjustable from 1 to 3. The Keep Britain Working review estimates that poor workplace health costs employers about £85 billion a year. Of this, £57 billion is sick pay (£10 billion) and lost output while employees cannot work (£47 billion). The remaining £28 billion is lost productivity from employees working while unwell (£21 billion) and the cost of conflict resolution, litigation and recruitment (£7 billion). The default of 1.5 is the ratio of £85 billion to £57 billion.
- Direct cost = (salary ÷ 260 weekdays) × sickness days × employees.
- Default days come from the CIPD Health and wellbeing at work 2025 survey. The UK average is 9.4 days per employee per year, up from 7.8 days in 2023. The averages are 13.3 days in public services, 9.1 in the private sector and 6.5 in non-profit organisations. CIPD advises caution with the public services and non-profit figures because of small samples. The ONS estimate for 2025 is 4.4 days per worker.
- Cause split starts from the ONS reasons for sickness absence in 2025. Musculoskeletal problems accounted for 14.6% of occurrences and mental health conditions for 8.9%. The ONS shares count occurrences of absence. They do not measure days lost or cost. The split is indicative and adjustable.
- On-costs excluded. The calculation uses gross salary only. It excludes employer National Insurance, which is 15% of earnings above £5,000 a year in 2026 to 2027, and employer pension contributions.
Absence management FAQs
Answers to the questions HR and managers ask most.
No. It is supportive and clinical. The aim is to understand what is keeping someone off work and to help them back safely, not to penalise illness.
As early as the absence looks likely to be prolonged or recurrent. Early referral gives the most options and the best outcomes, especially for stress and mental-health absence.
Yes. Medical detail stays between the employee and our clinicians. Your report focuses on fitness for work, timescales and adjustments, not diagnosis.
The report gives you clinical advice on fitness, prognosis and adjustments. Any decision rests with you, taking that advice into account alongside your own process.
A phased return to work is a planned, temporary reduction in hours or duties so that an employee can come back before they are fully recovered. Occupational health advises on the pattern and the review points; the employer agrees it with the employee.
Absence of four weeks or more, as CIPD defines it. We advise involving us earlier where a case is complex.
We aim to offer an appointment within 5 working days and provide the written report within 72 hours of the appointment.
Related services
Absence management often works alongside these:
Management referrals
Independent, work-focused advice on fitness, adjustments and return to work.
Learn more →Mental health & neurodiversity
Support for mental ill health, the leading cause of long-term absence (CIPD 2025).
Learn more →Wellness screening
Screening days that pick up the conditions behind absence.
Learn more →This page is general information for employers and is not individual medical or legal advice.
Talk to us about absence management
Talk to our team about proactive absence management for your organisation. We answer enquiries within 3 working hours and turn reports around within 72 hours.