“Employees more often return to work immediately after their day’s absence, while with a sick note they would usually spend a few days longer at home,” says Acerta. Short-term absenteeism in the workplace (less than a month absent due to illness) was almost five percent lower in the past three months than in the previous year. In the first quarter of this year, 3.4 percent of workable hours were lost due to short-term absenteeism, in 2022 this was still 3.6 percent. At the same time, there were fewer sick people in the workplace in the first quarter of 2023. 72.6 percent of working Belgians have not been sick for a single day in recent months, compared to only 70.5 percent last year.
Since the abolition of the sick note for one day, sick leave of exactly one day is gaining in importance. In the first three months of this year, 10.9 percent of employees were home sick on one or more occasions for exactly one day. In 2022 that was 10.6 percent and in corona year 2021 it was 9.3 percent. The number of employees who actually stayed home sick for one day also increased from 2.4 percent in the first quarter of 2022 to 3.0 percent in the first quarter of 2023.
“We understand that employers are suspicious of the abolition of the sick note, but this needs to be nuanced, as our first findings show,” says Mien Vanhegen, mental well-being expert at Acerta Consult. “It is and remains important for companies to build mutual trust with their employees and to assume that employees will not abuse the system. A strong attendance policy that focuses on making absenteeism a subject of discussion, awareness raising and activation is indispensable in this context.”
Finally, Acerta calls on companies to register absences with and without a sick note even better so that the impact of the new measure also becomes clear in the longer term.