The National Association of Human Resources Directors (ANDRH) is sounding the alarm. Its vice-president, Benoît Serre, says “To see the wave coming”. Between Covid patients, contact case employees who isolate themselves for a few days, or even those who have to stop to look after their children – as has often been the case before the holidays – the upward trend is very clear.
It comes to end a year 2021 marked by the doubling of sick leaves, as the mutualist Malakoff Humanis noted in his latest annual barometer of absenteeism at work. A barometer according to which the stops prescribed due to the Covid have gone from 6 to 12% of the total absences in one year.
A major Scandinavian airline, SAS, is canceling dozens of flights right now due to coronavirus sick days. After removing around thirty worldwide on Tuesday, December 21, it announced a dozen more yesterday from its Stockholm hub. SAS speaks of employees sick with Covid, having symptoms, or living with people with the virus in their homes, and who must stay at home, as recommended by the authorities. Absences at the worst time for the company, whose holiday season is one of the busiest of the year with 600 daily flights.
Closer to home, some regional SNCF lines, particularly in Occitania, are suspended for the same reasons. For lack of drivers – either because they have the Covid or because they are in contact – the line between Perpignan and Villefranche-de-Conflent is at a standstill until Sunday January 2, its trains are replaced by buses. Other TER lines around Carcassonne, Nîmes or Toulouse are also concerned.
For now, most of these sick leaves are the result of the 5th wave, but companies are worried about what could happen with Omicron, especially since the absences for Covid are already higher than they were at fall 2020, during the 2nd wave of the pandemic. For the moment, says Benoît Serre of the ANDRH, we do not yet see the effects of Omicron, but if the daily cases of contamination exceed 100,000 as the government tells us, “We will feel it pass” according to him, before adding “the start of the school year (Editor’s note: from January) gonna be hot ”. We have been warned!