Sick leave is very closely connected to the quality of the prevention management in a company. Avoid absences and you will save your company unnecessary costs..
Occupational Health and Safety promotes and maximises guarantees concerning workers’ safety and their healthcare.
This minimises the risk of accidents or absences from work. The latter are very common situations that cost the company money.
Investing in OHS will always be better than the consequences and costs arising from accidents at work or sick leave.
Let’s look at what being on sick leave could mean for a company.
Sick leave: costs for the company
Sick leave is understood to be a situation whereby a worker cannot continue to work due to health reasons or an accident at work.
There are two types of sick leave:
- Common Contingencies. This is leave due to natural causes like an illness or a non work-related accident.
- Occupational Contingencies. This is leave due to a work-related accident or an occupational illness.
The coverage of expenses for the leave is borne by the companies, but depending on the contingency, the company can recoup the amount through a social security or the medical insurance company.
We then have the following scenarios:
Leave due to a common illness
Leave by common contingencies, the worker does not receive anything for the first 3 days. The company pays 60% of their salary until day 16. Then social security or the medical insurance company makes the payments.
Leave due to occupational contingencies
The company is responsible for paying 75% of the worker’s salary. Social security will not pay anything, although there are cases whereby the medical insurance company can proceed to pay the salary.
Work-related accidents
When faced with a work-related accident, the company pays everything. It is a delegated payment that can be later compensated via social security contributions.
Ultimately, sick leave can be costly for the company, which is avoidable if there is a proper Occupational Health and Safety procedure in place.
OHS training: essential for avoiding sick leave and work-related accidents
There is no doubt that a controlled and up to date Occupational Health and Safety plan is the key to lowering work-related accidents or sick leave.
Making a preventative culture and philosophy part of a company involves the interested parties working together to develop the best possible prevention strategy.
At Preventor we understand the importance of offering different types of courses that will help to adequately train both companies and workers.
Courses related to dealing with stress, taking care of body and mind, emergencies, avoiding accidents… specialist OHS training provides workers with great value, training them in prevention and providing them with the skills to avoid risks and to understand their duties and obligations when it comes to prevention.
For companies, this means investing and saving costs on potential accidents or leave, which will have a positive impact and improve the working environment.
Check out our excellent brochure of OHS courses and enjoy our online training platform. It is the perfect resource to improve how your company handles occupational health and safety.