The rate of workplace absenteeism due to IT reaches 6.26% in 2025. Since 2013, the protected population has grown by more than 5 million people, while spending on IT has increased by more than 13 billion euros. Umivale Activa has analyzed together with Sagardoy Abogados the legal changes and business best practices to improve the management of workplace absenteeism
The growth of temporary incapacity (IT) has become one of the main challenges in the labor market, with repercussions that affect workers, companies, the healthcare system, and Social Security.
In 2025, the rate of workplace absenteeism due to IT has already been at 6.26% of potential working days lost, according to Umivale Activa’s estimate with data from the Sala Segura of the Ministry of Social Security. More than 5.4% compared with the previous year and 52% compared with 2018.
To analyze its causes and explore possible solutions, Umivale Activa and Sagardoy Abogados have held an event. A meeting that has served to address current legislation, delve into the improvement needs of that regulatory framework, and showcase possible business best practices to help prevent or mitigate the problem within organizations.
The event started from the main conclusions of the study on the determinants of workplace absenteeism, carried out by Umivale Activa in collaboration with the Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Económicas (Ivie). The General Director of Umivale Activa, Héctor Blasco, and the emeritus professor of Psychology Applied to Business at the University of Valencia, José María Peiró, have laid the groundwork for the debate with the focuses identified by the study as triggers for the increase in workplace absenteeism due to IT in Spain.
During his talk, Peiró highlighted "that this research has represented significant progress in the understanding of temporary incapacity in Spain by incorporating the analysis of more than 70 million real sick leave reports, through access to the Sala Segura, compared with other studies based on surveys. Its results have made it possible to identify a growing evolution of the different variables analyzed and to confirm that the increase in IT responds to a structural-type phenomenon, which requires specific and coordinated responses".
For his part, Blasco has stated how during the study "we saw that all the analysis axes worsened and that they did so at great speed, but there were three focal points with a different pattern of behavior: mental health and allergies within the conditions, the duration of the processes, and the repetition of work absences in the same patients", he has assured.
In that regard he has pointed out that "the study allows us to affirm that absences due to temporary incapacity in Spain do not grow only because of a health problem. The fundamental causes must be found in the lack of coordination and collaboration of all the agents involved in management and in our regulations, which have not aged well". "One of the most important variables that compromises the management of the problem is the legal framework that regulates it, added to the evolution of IT allowances in collective bargaining agreements. Basically we have a management problem", he has asserted.
Thus, Blasco has highlighted that adequate regulation "should improve the management of the agents involved, reduce bureaucracy, discourage opportunistic behavior, and ensure the sustainability of the system".
"This is not solved from a trench. As a country we have a common problem. By analyzing the data that appear in the Social Security System, that is, only State spending and without counting that of companies, in 2013 we had 16.3 million workers and spending on IT in Spain was 5,051 million euros. In 2025, with 21.6 million workers -about 5 million more- but IT spending has grown to 18,413 million -around 13 billion more than in 2013-. That is, in 12 years the working population has increased by 32.7%, the CPI by 26.7%, but the benefits that Social Security assumes for IT have grown by 264%". In that sense Blasco has stated that "we have a country-wide problem that generates a competitiveness problem in our companies and a sustainability problem in the system, and we have to see how together we manage to maintain our welfare state and the rights achieved for the good of our population, but at the same time make it viable and sustainable" Blasco has said.
Regulatory situation and good practices in labor relations
The session has continued by analyzing the regulatory and judicial situation regarding the problem of absenteeism.
Thus, Martín Godino, managing partner at Sagardoy Abogados, has reviewed the legal changes that have favored the current situation. Since the repeal in 2020 of Article 52(d) of the Workers’ Statute, which considered absenteeism as a cause for objective dismissal, the comprehensive Law 15/2022 on equal treatment and non-discrimination, and the 2023 reform of the General Social Security Law, “which, instead of facilitating the work of the mutual insurance companies in monitoring IT, has made it more difficult.”
Among the improvement proposals, he has pointed to coordination between the SPS and the INSS, diligence in processing procedures for hires and dismissals, reinforcing the Medical Inspection, and even that the SPS could be informed of the functions and characteristics of the beneficiary’s job in order to assess the scope of the leave or whether it is appropriate. He has also advocated for opening the possibility of partial discharges or conditional ones, with adjustments to the workplace, and for the system to make better use of the capabilities and experience of the mutual insurance companies in managing IT.
Next, Jordi Muns, director of Corporate Services at Grupo Ametller Origen, has provided examples of good labor relations practices that can help reduce absenteeism from within organizations with the initiatives they are carrying out.
For her part, Araceli Morato, president of Umivale Activa, has highlighted the work of the mutual insurance companies. “The mutual insurance companies have had a role that has been little known and recognized by society. We work by overcoming difficulties of legal uncertainty and limited resources, always in an austere manner, and we carry out extraordinary work in the field of the health of working people.”
Thus, he has underlined that, in a context in which absenteeism at work has reached record figures, it is essential to become aware of the consequences that go beyond the individual sphere. "Beyond the effects that sick leave has on the health and wellbeing of the workers themselves, absenteeism generates an increase in costs, a loss of productivity and organizational misalignments in companies. For the economy as a whole, it translates into a significant drop in GDP and competitiveness, as well as an important economic impact on Social Security that puts the system's sustainability at risk. A responsibility that cannot rest exclusively on the management of companies. We are facing a problem that affects all of us".
"We continue working on the next phase of the research project, with Ivie, because we feel the obligation to keep looking for answers and providing solutions to this serious situation".