Middle Aged Take More Sick Days

Middle Aged Take More Sick Days.

Research by AXA PPP Healthcare, the health and medical insurance arm of AXA Group, has found that workers aged 30-49 years old are twice as likely to take time off work due to illness that 18-29 year olds.

Their research found that:

• 30-49 year olds take on average 2.3 days off sick every 6 months.  With 25% of the band having had 3-4 days off sick in the last 6 months.
• 12% of 30-49 year olds took 5-6 days off in the last 6 months
• 6% of 18-29 years took 5-6 days off in the last 6 months
• 5% of 50-69 year olds took  5-6 days off in the last 6 months

Dr Steve Iley, AXA PPP healthcare’s medical director for health services, said: “Employers need to recognise that these middle aged workers are a particularly squeezed group, struggling with work and home pressures. The research suggests that many are not motivated or feeling valued in their work, an issue we would encourage employers to proactively address as the 30-49 age group are likely to have at least 20 years left in the workplace. Employers need to support their workers’ mental and physical health, offering positive steps to ensure wellbeing now will help to ensure resilience in future.”

Other finding of the research showed that

• 27% of middle aged workers feel work takes over and stops them pursuing life plans
• 15% of the middle aged feel they have no career opportunities
• 38% of the middle aged permanently feel stressed citing both financial worries and work concerns as the main causes of stress

Comment

Our early career years tend to be the building blocks of our career with less responsibility.  When we move into our 30’s and 40’s we have usually moved up the corporate ladder taking on more responsibility but equally we may have families now, bigger mortgages and literally more people relying on us at work as well as at home.

Clearly this can cause stress. 

As we move into our 50’s, ideally children have the flown the nest, university and schooling costs may have come down and the end is in sight for our mortgages.  In addition, our careers in our 50’s tend to be established now and we are at the level of seniority that we are likely to finish on, and perhaps have more experience for working at the level.

What does this all tell us?  Adequate income protection, sickness insurance, private medical insurance and critical illness insurance are key at this stage of our lives.

Perhaps as employers we would also recognise that our middle aged workers need some ‘tender love and care’ (TLC) to ensure that they work well with less sick time in this critical working phase as they are key to our business survival.