Absence cost calculator (UK)
What sickness absence actually costs your business in pounds - salary paid for days not worked, cover, and the sick pay you can't reclaim.
Your absence
Direct cost assumes absence is paid at normal salary (company sick pay). Where only SSP applies, the cash cost is lower but the lost output is the same - the salary line is the honest measure of what the absence cost you. Cover is estimated at 1.25× the day rate to reflect agency and overtime premiums; adjust the percentage to match how often you actually backfill.
At the UK average of 9.4 sick days a year, a 25-person team on £32,000 loses roughly £40,000 a year - about £1,590 per employee, before you count lost output or the management time. The salary paid for days not worked is the bulk of it; the sick pay itself is the small part.
How do you calculate the cost of absence?
- Daily rate: average salary ÷ 260 working days.
- Direct cost: daily rate × total sick days across the workforce.
- Cover: the share of those days you actually backfill, at agency or overtime rates.
- Add what you can't see: management time, delays, and the colleagues absorbing the work.
That last line is real but hard to price. Some analyses apply a multiplier to direct costs to capture it; treat any such figure as an estimate rather than a measurement, and be transparent about it if you put the number in front of a board.
What does statutory sick pay cost you?
Since 6 April 2026, SSP is payable from day one at the lower of £123.25 a week or 80% of average weekly earnings - roughly £24.65 per day for a five-day worker. Two things follow:
- Employers cannot reclaim SSP. The Percentage Threshold Scheme ended in 2014 and the 2026 reforms didn't bring it back.
- Short absences now cost real money. Before April 2026, the three waiting days meant a one- or two-day absence often cost nothing in SSP. Now day one is payable, so the pattern of frequent short absences has a direct cost it never used to have.
Detail in the April 2026 SSP changes, and per-absence figures in the SSP cost calculator.
Which absences cost most - and it isn't the long ones
A single four-week absence is expensive but plannable: you arrange cover once and the work gets redistributed deliberately. Eight separate single days across the year cost less in salary and far more in disruption - each one is unplanned, each needs a scramble, and none gets covered properly.
That's exactly the pattern the Bradford Factor was built to surface, and why cost alone is the wrong lens. Use this calculator for the size of the problem, the Bradford Factor calculator for its shape, and the absence rate calculator to see how you compare nationally.
What actually reduces the cost?
- Record it properly. You cannot manage what nobody logs - and day-one SSP means short absences now leave a payroll trail anyway.
- Return-to-work conversations, every time. The single most effective intervention, and free: the questions to ask.
- Look for causes, not culprits. CIPD puts mental ill health as the leading cause of long-term absence - see returning after mental-health absence.
- Set fair triggers that prompt a conversation rather than a punishment: absence trigger points.
- Exclude what must be excluded - pregnancy and disability-related absence: the exclusions guide.
This calculator applies the statutory rules as published and shows its working, but it cannot know your contracts, your policies or anything unusual about the case. Treat the figure as a starting point, and take advice on anything contested or expensive.
Know the number before the board asks
CoDash tracks every absence with cost, pattern and Bradford scoring built in - so the figure is on a dashboard, not reconstructed from a spreadsheet the night before.