Related Articles
Top Stories
May 24 2012 17:31
The Reserve Bank will maintain current interest rates, and a considerable reduction in the local petrol price is anticipated, says governor Gill Marcus.
May 25 2012 13:58
The costs of the first phase of the Gauteng Freeway Improvement Project have increased significantly to almost R90bn, according to a report.
May 25 2012 11:36
The JSE has identified and stopped "incorrect" trades from one of its members, and will reverse the trades and lower the session's total value after the close.
Cape Town - Increasing numbers of South Africans are taking sick leave because of psychological illness, costing companies over R1bn a year, management consultants said on Tuesday.
"About R19bn was lost due to sick absenteeism in South Africa last year, and R1.2bn of that was lost by companies who had to pay the direct costs of sick leave due to psychological reasons," said Johnny Johnson, chief executive of Corporate Absenteeism Management Solutions (CAMS).
CAMS studied a sample of over 100 000 employees in more than 60 companies, and examined the medical certificates presented by employees after returning from sick leave.
They found that between March 2005 and the beginning of March 2006, 45 out of very 1 000 employees took time off for psychological reasons.
This had risen to 65 out of every 1 000 employees between March 2006 and March 2007.
Psychological illness includes depression and absenteeism due to stress.
The average number of days per year an employee was ill for psychological reasons was 4.6 days, double the time the average employee takes off for other illnesses, said Johnson.
"Companies should be asking themselves what they can do to make their staff happy and developing wellness management programmes around these statistics. If they don't, they can expect more of their staff to fall prone to psychological illness," Johnson said.