Sick leave among industrial workers in Norway has been on a steady decline for the past six years and reached a record low rate of 3.9 percent this month. The head of trade association Norsk Industri says it’s all a matter of simply looking forward to going to work.
“When folks are happy on the job, sick leave falls,” Stein Lier-Hansen of Norsk Industri told newspaper Dagens Næringsliv (DN). He lauded cooperation between management and labour unions.
“They’ve worked together to analyze what leads to absence from the job, and then they agreed on measures to prevent it,” Lier-Hansen said. “Enthusiasm for the work is the most important factor.”
Absenteeism peaked around 2004 but since has mostly been on the decline. The overall sick leave rate in Norway through the second quarter of this year was 5.7 percent, according to statistics from state welfare agency NAV.
Views and News staff