How many of your staff's sick days start with money worries?

Most owners have a rough idea how many sick days their team takes in a year, because they pay for them. Far fewer know why the days are taken. The sickness record will say a stomach upset or a headache, because that is what the employee wrote down, and in a good many cases what started it was a letter from a lender, an overdraft that will not clear or a rent increase the pay does not cover. Employees very rarely say that part out loud.

This article puts the absence figures next to what is known about money worries in the UK workforce, so you can see how much of one comes from the other. The figures come from the ONS, the CIPD, the FCA, the Money and Mental Health Policy Institute, Pepper Money, the Cebr and two employee surveys, all linked at the end.

Absence is at a fifteen year high

Two surveys measure sickness absence in the UK. The Office for National Statistics asks workers themselves, through the Labour Force Survey. The CIPD asks employers. Their 2025 results are below.

The two disagree on the level because of who is asked and who is in the sample. The CIPD's respondents are mostly larger organisations, and absence rises with size. Firms with fewer than 50 staff in its survey averaged 4.5 days, and firms with 50 to 249 staff averaged 9.1. Both are above where they were before the pandemic. The CIPD figure is the highest it has recorded in more than fifteen years, and the ONS rate is 0.1 points above 2019.

What the absence record says

On paper most sickness absence is ordinary illness. The ONS breakdown for 2025 is below.

The CIPD asks employers to name their top causes, and each employer can name several, so the percentages do not add up to 100. For short-term absence 78% of employers put minor illness in their top causes, 29% mental ill health and 26% stress. For long-term absence 41% put mental ill health first, 31% musculoskeletal injuries and 28% stress. 64% of organisations had stress-related absence in the past year, and among those the top causes were as follows.

The CIPD groups personal health, family and financial concerns together as non-work factors, and 57% of organisations put at least one in their top three. There is no separate figure for money in any of this, in the CIPD survey or in the ONS data, because nobody records absence that way. An employee who has not slept because of a bill and calls in with a headache is recorded as minor illness, and the money never appears anywhere.

A survey of UK employees published in February 2026 asked the question directly. 83% said they had taken at least one day off in the past year because of stress, anxiety or illness linked to their personal finances. 61% had taken four or more days and 12% had taken between 11 and 20. The survey was commissioned by a workplace finance provider, so it has an interest in the answer. Even allowing for that, the numbers are high. 43% of the same workers said they would only mention money-related stress to their employer if it forced them to call in sick.

How many of your staff are worried about money

Nobody is going to put their hand up and tell you they are skint, and you cannot go round asking. So the best guide we have is what the national figures say about people in general. The FCA keeps track of how many people are behind on their bills, and a few surveys have asked workers straight out how money is affecting them. Your team is made up of the same people, so the odds are the figures hold for them too.

In a firm of 30 people, the FCA and Pepper Money figures suggest somewhere between four and eleven of them have been under financial strain recently. The employee surveys put the number who worry about money every month far higher.

What money worries do to health

The link between money and illness is well documented. The Money and Mental Health Policy Institute collects the research.

Put those next to the CIPD finding that mental ill health is now the leading cause of long-term absence and the second most common cause of short-term absence. Some of the mental ill health on your absence record will have money behind it. WEALTH at work found 35% of workers said money worries had left them mentally exhausted and 10% said they had taken more sick days as a result.

What it costs an employer

Two studies have put a number on the absence that starts with money.

The Cebr figure counts presenteeism, which is people who come to work and cannot concentrate. It is nearly two thirds of the total and it never appears on an absence record.

Those are all causes together. The second example applies Pepper Money's rates to the same two firms to show the money-related share of recorded absence. Pepper Money is the most conservative of the surveys, so treat it as a floor.

The Stream survey, where 61% of workers reported four or more days off for money-related reasons, would put the figure many times higher. Your own figure sits somewhere between the two. On top of that is the person who comes in every day and gets half as much done.

Why owners rarely hear about it

WEALTH at work asked UK workers what money worries had done to their work.

Four in ten said money worries had raised their stress. One in ten said they had taken more sick days because of them. Only 13% would go to their employer about it. In a firm of 30 people, that means most of those struggling say nothing, and the days show up on the absence record as something else.

What SMEs offer compared with large firms

The CIPD also asks what support employers offer to all their staff. The private sector figures are below.

A quarter of SMEs offer any financial education or support. Large firms are twice as likely to, and they are the ones with HR departments to spot the pattern. A smaller firm can close that gap cheaply, because much of the help available costs the employer nothing.

Signs it is happening in your firm

The surveys cannot tell you anything about your own team, so you are left with what you notice. Most owners who have been through it say the signs were there, and they only made sense afterwards.

The one that comes up most is timing. Someone who is short of money tends to go off sick in the last few days before payday, when the account is empty and the stress is worst, and it happens month after month. Mondays are another pattern. The weekend is when people sit down and look at the bank app properly, and a bad Sunday night can turn into a Monday off.

Then there are the things people ask for and the things they stop doing. A request for a pay advance or extra shifts from someone who never asked before. Opting out of the pension, or asking to pay less into it, which is usually one of the first things to go when money is tight. Quietly dropping out of anything that costs money, the team lunch, the Christmas do, the collection for a colleague who is leaving. And the general wear that goes with not sleeping, which shows up as tiredness, lateness and mistakes in someone who used to be reliable.

Any one of these on its own means very little. Two or three together in the same person, over a couple of months, is usually worth a quiet word.

How to raise it without prying

You cannot ask an employee about their finances and you should not try. What you can do is make sure every person knows that help exists and that using it is normal. Three ways that work in small firms.

1. Say it to everyone, not to one person. A line in a team meeting or a message to all staff. "If money is tight for anyone this winter, MoneyHelper is free and confidential, and nobody here needs to know you used it." Nobody is singled out, and the person who needs it hears it.
2. Put it where people look. A line on the payslip, a note on the staff noticeboard, a link in the induction pack. The point is that help is findable without having to ask anyone.
3. Give managers one sentence. "You have seemed worn out lately. I am not going to ask why. If any of it is money, there is free help and I can point you to it." It respects privacy and opens the door.

What matters is that the first time someone hears about the help is not the day they are already in trouble.

Estimate the cost in your own firm

You can get a working figure in ten minutes with your own absence record.

1. Count the days lost in the last twelve months. Use the actual record, not the average. Include part days.
2. Put a daily cost on them. Pay for the day plus whatever it cost to cover it, whether that was overtime, a temp or lost output. £150 is a starting point for a firm paying around the living wage. A firm with higher pay or billable staff will be well above it.
3. Multiply. That is the cost of all absence. Most SMEs have never put a number on it.
4. Apply a range for money. Pepper Money's rates put the money-related share at about 6% of staff losing 4 days each. The Stream survey puts it far higher. Take a tenth of your total as a cautious figure and a third as a high one.

The IQ Money calculators page does the arithmetic for you. Whatever figure you land on, compare it with what a financial wellbeing benefit would cost you. For the one we work with, the answer is nothing.

What can an SME do about it?

1. Look at your own absence record by reason and by date. Count how many days are recorded as stress or unspecified, and whether they cluster in the last week before payday.
2. Tell staff where free help is. MoneyHelper, the government-backed service, covers debt, budgeting and pensions at no cost. Most people do not know it exists.
3. Make it normal to ask. Managers who know what support exists can point someone to it without needing to hear the details.
4. Check pay timing. Ask whether your pay date lands before or after the dates most bills go out. Moving it is cheap and some staff will notice straight away.
5. Offer a financial wellbeing benefit. Large firms do as standard. The one we work with is free to the employer and takes an afternoon to set up.
6. Budget for the wage rise. The National Living Wage goes to £13.21 in April 2027. Our Budget article has the cost per employee.

Most SMEs do not budget for absence and pay for it anyway. If a large share of your team's absence starts with money, it is a cost you can reduce without spending anything. Our cash reserve article covers how much cover to hold for the months when absence runs high.

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