The benefits available are the same whatever sector you are in. What changes is which arrangements are worth having, which risks are worth reviewing first, and how people are actually reached, because a workforce that is mostly on a site is not reached the same way as one that is mostly at a desk.
These pages set out what to review. None of them quotes an industry absence rate as though it described your organisation, and the reason is on each page.
We are not going to show you an industry absence rate here. The obvious move would be to take the national figure for the nearest official industry classification and present it as this sector's number, and the reason we have not is that the classification is usually wrong for the sector as people understand it, and the difference from the all-industry figure is often not statistically significant anyway. A headline figure that has to be qualified into nothing in the next sentence is worse than no figure. It is the same rule our wellbeing dashboard follows: no comparison appears without a stated source, and nothing at all below five people.
The national picture is genuinely useful, and it is published properly on UK sickness absence rates, with the definitions, the low-sample flags, and the reasons it describes a population and not your organisation.
The Office for National Statistics publishes absence rates by industry sector, but the classifications are broad and do not always match a sector as employers understand it, and several of the differences between industries are not statistically significant. We publish the national figures in full at alltoogether.com/sickness-absence-rates, with the definitions and limitations, and we do not restate them here as though they described your organisation.
The benefits available and the way we broke them are the same whatever sector you are in. What changes is which arrangements are worth having, which risks are worth reviewing first, and how people are reached, because a workforce that is mostly on a site is not reached the same way as one that is mostly at a desk. This page is about those questions rather than about a different product.
This page is general information for employers in one sector. It is not a recommendation, not advice about whether any arrangement suits your organisation, and not a claim that published industry data describes your workforce. The sector observations here are our editorial judgement from broking and workplace-health work, not survey findings. Anything about a particular policy is governed by that policy document, and the people who can confirm it are the provider or your broker.
| Office for National Statistics | Sickness absence in the UK labour market, 2025 edition Supports: the national absence context linked from this page Published or updated: released 1 May 2026. Retrieved: 15 August 2026. Limitation: a household survey with no employer in it, and industry is self-defined by the respondent, so it is national context and not a benchmark for any organisation. |
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| Health and Safety Executive | Management Standards for work-related stress Supports: the six areas named under work design and workload Published or updated: current guidance. Retrieved: 15 August 2026. Limitation: guidance, not legislation. HSE states it does not expect an employer to meet all six standards. |
| Alltoogether | Editorial position on sector evidence Supports: why no industry absence rate is quoted as this sector's figure Published or updated: set 15 August 2026. Retrieved: 15 August 2026. Limitation: the sector observations on this page are our editorial judgement from broking and workplace-health work. They are not survey findings and are not presented as measured. |
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