Given the increase in absenteeism in Spain, companies need to better understand this phenomenon and have practical tools to manage it. For this reason,amec’s Talent Technical Committee has met to delve deeper into the subject, with the participation of experts from EY, amec’s partner company.

In the session, EY presented the current keys to absenteeism in Spain and the practical issues that companies can adopt to address it, and then the members of the Technical Commission added elements based on their experience.

In the session, EY presented the current keys to absenteeism in Spain and the practical issues that companies can adopt to address it, and then the members of the Technical Commission added elements based on their experience.

The presentation used in the session is available for download below.

EY – AMEC Absenteeism Presentation 19032026

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The main keys presented are:

1. Absenteeism takes many forms. In addition to medical leave, there are other forms that are equally relevant for companies: unjustified absenteeism (absences without a valid cause), attendance (the employee is present but does not perform) and emotional absenteeism (physical presence without involvement). Each form requires a different approach.

2. Temporary incapacity (TI) is the form of absenteeism with the highest incidence and the fastest growing. 25% of workers concentrate 55% of the TI episodes, and the percentage of people with more than one episode per year has increased from 23% in 2017 to 31.8% in 2024. Sick leave of less than three days has grown by 141% and sick leave of more than 365 days by 205%.

3. Mental health is the most worrisome emerging factor. Musculoskeletal disorders and mental health problems are the main causes of sick leave, with mental health processes having the longest average duration (98.5 days). Stress, burnout and the difficulty of reconciling work and family life are behind most of these situations.

4. Absenteeism has a procyclical behavior. It increases in periods of economic expansion and tends to decrease in periods of contraction, which indicates that motivational and commitment factors play a relevant role in addition to purely health-related factors.

5. The causes are multiple and of a very different nature. The aging of the workforce, the saturation of the healthcare system, demotivation and job insecurity combine with health problems to generate a complex phenomenon that does not admit simple solutions.

6. There are structural dysfunctions in the Spanish system. The entities that clinically assess TI and those that assume the economic cost are different, 17 autonomous health services coexist, and the INSS’s capacity to supervise the process is limited, which unnecessarily prolongs many sick leaves.

7. The business impact is immediate and quantifiable. Each absence forces the reorganization of shifts, redistribution of workloads and increased pressure on teams, with direct effects on productivity and the working environment. At the macroeconomic level, the IT benefit is already the second largest INSS expense, behind only pensions, with growth of more than 200% since 2014.

8. Absenteeism management should be structured in two phases: preventive and corrective. In the preventive phase, companies can reinforce prevention and promotion of occupational health, with special attention to musculoskeletal and mental health disorders, and use the compensation system to encourage effective attendance. In the corrective phase, follow-up protocols during the TI and reinstatement plans, as well as company medical verification, are the main instruments available.

9. Economic incentives are valid, but must be designed with care. It is possible to link part of the variable compensation to attendance, but the schemes must be objective, proportional and known in advance. It is expressly forbidden to penalize IT for common illness or to reduce incentives linked to maternity, paternity or care.

10. The elimination of the IT supplement is a limited option. If it is agreed in a collective bargaining agreement, its modification requires collective bargaining. If it is not, the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court only allows it to be withdrawn for new hires. In no case may a variable remuneration already accrued be withdrawn.

11. There is no single solution. To reverse the trend, companies must combine a preventive approach focused on occupational health and well-being with corrective mechanisms to actively manage IT processes and encourage reincorporation. All of this must connect the legal-labor perspective with people management and organizational culture.