No sick days for over half of Dutch employees

About half of Dutch employees took no sick leave in all of 2013, Statistics Netherlands stated in a new report. Some 48% of employees applied for one or more days of sick leave last year, with fewer than a fourth of all sick leave being caused by work-related illness or accident.

About 23% of these employees have fallen sick mainly, or partly due to their working circumstances, and 71% of the employees claimed that their latest absenteeism was not work related. The remaining six percent of employees could not report whether their ailments were due to work or not.

Work related absenteeism was mainly reported in the hospitality industry, construction and transportation.

Sick days and health related absenteeism from work appeared to be very closely related to age, the official statistics agency reported, along with gender, company size, and education level.

Prolonged sick leave also seemed to be most common amongst elderly employees, warehousing staff, and construction workers.

The results in this report were established by the National Survey of Working Conditions (NEA), which is performed by TNO (Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research) and CBS.