Employees in Belgium were absent less often in 2023 than in previous years. This was evident from a study by HR services company Acerta on Friday. The employees worked an average of 83.3 percent of the time, which for a full-time employee corresponds to 208 days per year.
The attendance rate of 83.3 percent is an increase of 0.8 percentage points compared to 2022. It is also the highest figure in the past five years.
Acerta bases this conclusion on data from approximately 390,000 employees at 30,000 private sector companies. The researchers took into account absences due to sick leave, temporary unemployment, career breaks and holidays.
Sickness absence remains the main reason for absences from the workplace. In 2023, an average of 7.9 percent of working hours – approximately 20 days in a working year – was not worked due to employees falling ill.
More sick in large companies
Absenteeism due to illness is higher in large companies than in small companies. For companies with more than 500 employees (9.9 percent), the problem is even twice as great as for the smallest employers (5 percent).
“The fact that employees were more available last year than in previous years is good news in times of labor shortages,” says Dirk Vanderhoydonck of Acerta Consult. He continues to point out the large number of absences due to illness, something that, unlike holidays or career breaks, cannot be planned by the employer. “The fact that an average of 20 days of labor is lost every year is really a point of attention for companies that want to increase their productivity.”