A survey of 200 HR Directors by executive search firm HR Recruit has found 68 per cent of HR Directors believe that hybrid working has made short-term absence harder to track. 37 per cent say the problem is at its worst during the school holidays. The issue is such that 54 per cent say their recorded absence data now understates the actual level of short-term absence.
Since 6 April 2026, an eligible worker has been entitled to statutory sick pay from the first day of sickness absence, which is currently set at £123.25 a week, or 80 per cent of average weekly earnings if lower. Both the three-day waiting period and the lower earnings limit have now been removed. The government estimates that around 1.3 million low-paid employees are brought into eligibility by the change, and that the reforms will add roughly £450 million a year to employer sick pay costs.
Jo Thompson, Divisional Director at HR Recruit, said employers are now attaching a cost to absence data they know is incomplete. “For four years, employers let people work from home on days they would once have called in sick. Those days never made it to the absence data. However, this April the cost of every recorded day changed, and businesses are now applying a price to a figure they know is incomplete,” she said.
The hiring effect of this is already visible. 41 per cent of respondents said their sickness absence policy has not been updated since April, and Thompson said clients are asking for HR managers who can carry employee relations casework. “The businesses that have been recording absence properly through the hybrid years are the ones that can cost it, while others are looking to hire someone who can rebuild four years of data,” she said.
School holidays make the record harder to keep. Employees hold a day-one right to a reasonable amount of time-off for dependants. The law sets no limit on how much time can be taken, and ACAS notes that it says only that the amount should be “reasonable”.
That leave is unpaid and employees who cannot afford to lose a day’s pay do not always use it. A hybrid employee covering a childcare gap in August will often report the day as sickness or work around it without reporting anything. The first now costs the employer statutory sick pay from the first day, while the second never reaches the absence record.
Thompson said employers should treat the two outcomes as one problem. She said, “A childcare gap does not stop being an absence because nobody logged it. Employers are paying for one version of it and cannot see the other. Employers that write a clear policy on emergency time off and record every absence the same way whether the employee is in the office or at home are the ones that will know what August actually cost them.”
