Sickness absence in Swiss SMEs: 8.6 days per full-time job, and the first 30 days done right

In January 2026 the Office for Economic Affairs of the Canton of Zurich published a study on sickness absence. The number that stays with you: employees miss an average of 8.6 days a year per full-time job through illness or accident. In 2010 it was 6.3 days. Production losses came to around CHF 12 billion in 2024, before the cost of cover, overtime and postponed projects.

For a company with 20 employees that is not a statistic. It is 172 working days a year on which somebody is missing, spread across colds, back pain, accidents and, increasingly, absences on mental health grounds. This article works out what a sick day costs, explains what Swiss law requires of the employer, and shows which steps in the first 30 days of an absence decide how long it lasts. If you run a Swiss subsidiary from abroad, the rules below differ from most other countries in two respects: sick pay is the employer's duty by law, and dismissal during illness is blocked for a fixed period.

What the numbers say

The Zurich study names three reasons for the rise: more incapacity for work on mental health grounds, above all among younger employees; an ageing workforce with longer absences; and a change in behaviour since the pandemic, with people staying home with a cold more often. Premiums for daily sickness benefit insurance are rising noticeably as a result, especially for small companies with elevated claims and in sectors such as construction and cleaning.

In February 2026 the ZHAW school of management broke down the figures compiled for the Federal Office of Public Health. Absenteeism cost around CHF 18.0 billion in 2022, 73 per cent more than ten years earlier. Presenteeism, being at work with reduced capacity, cost almost twice as much at CHF 33.7 billion. Total health-related production losses reached CHF 70.5 billion, roughly CHF 8'000 per head.

On the mental health cases, the study by the insurer SWICA with WorkMed shows what is at stake. Incapacity for work on mental health grounds lasts 218 days on average, in 95 per cent of cases as full incapacity. In 57 per cent of cases a slight or a conflict at work stands at the beginning. About half of the people affected lose their job during the incapacity.

And the SMEs themselves? In the AXA study of March 2026, 42 per cent of the SMEs surveyed report rising absence costs over the past five years; among companies with 50 to 250 employees the share is 62 per cent. A third are moderately or severely affected by mental health absences, ten percentage points more than in 2023. A quarter take no measures at all.

What a sick day costs

On a monthly salary of CHF 6'500 and 21.7 working days a month, one day costs around CHF 300 in salary. Add the employer contributions to AHV/IV/EO and ALV (6.4 per cent, about CHF 20), plus the pension fund, accident insurance and family allowances, which vary by plan, sector and canton. A little over CHF 320 a day before a single task has been covered.

Item	Amount
Salary per working day at CHF 6'500	CHF 300
Employer contributions AHV/IV/EO and ALV	CHF 20
Direct cost per sick day	just over CHF 320
8.6 days per full-time job and year	more than CHF 2'750
Company with 20 full-time jobs	more than CHF 55'000

The indirect costs sit above that: colleagues' overtime, temporary staff, delayed orders, quality problems while a replacement settles in. A company that knows its absence rate knows whether it sits above or below the average. The rate is absence hours divided by target hours; 8.6 days on roughly 250 working days is about 3.4 per cent.

What Swiss law requires of the employer

Continued salary under Art. 324a of the Code of Obligations. An employee prevented from working through no fault of their own keeps receiving salary: for three weeks in the first year of service, and thereafter for an "appropriately longer period". What that means has been settled by the courts in three scales.

Year	Bern	Basel	Zurich
1st	3 weeks	3 weeks	3 weeks
2nd	1 month	2 months	8 weeks
3rd	2 months	2 months	9 weeks
4th	2 months	3 months	10 weeks
5th to 9th	3 months	3 months	11 to 15 weeks
10th to 14th	4 months	3 to 4 months	16 to 20 weeks
15th to 19th	5 months	4 to 5 months	21 to 25 weeks
20th to 24th	6 months	5 to 6 months	26 to 30 weeks

The Bern scale applies in most cantons, the Basel scale in Basel-Stadt and Basel-Landschaft, the Zurich scale in Zurich, Schaffhausen and Thurgau. The place of jurisdiction decides which one applies, usually the company's registered office. The scales run per year of service, and several absences in the same year of service are added together. A collective labour agreement can provide longer periods.

Daily sickness benefit insurance. Most SMEs insure the risk. Under Art. 324a para. 4, the insurance replaces the statutory duty only if the arrangement is agreed in writing and is at least equivalent. The usual cover is 80 per cent of salary for 720 days within 900 days, with a waiting period of 30 or 60 days during which the employer pays salary itself, and a premium of which half may be passed on to employees. Without the written agreement, the full statutory duty remains, and the company pays both the premium and the salary.

Protection against dismissal under Art. 336c. After the probation period, a notice of termination given during the blocking period is void: 30 days in the first year of service, 90 days from the second to the fifth year inclusive, 180 days from the sixth. A notice period already running is suspended during the incapacity and resumes afterwards. The blocking period applies per illness; a new illness triggers a new blocking period.

Medical certificate. The law sets no deadline. A certificate from the third day is customary, and the company may require one from the first day in its regulations. The certificate documents the incapacity; it does not decide it. Where there is reasonable doubt, the employer may require an examination by a medical examiner of its choosing and bears the cost. Partial incapacity, say 50 per cent, is a certificate like any other, and for the company often the most valuable one.

Duty of care under Art. 328. The employer protects the health and personality of its employees. For mental health absences, which begin at the workplace in 57 per cent of cases, this duty is the reason to look before the certificate arrives.

The first 30 days

The length of an absence is decided in its first weeks, not at the end. That holds above all for mental health cases, where contact with the company breaks off after a few weeks and a return grows less likely with every week that passes.

Day 1: notification and contact. The employee reports to their line manager, not by message to a colleague. The manager takes the call, asks how the person is doing and clarifies what the team needs to cover. No pressure, no questions about the diagnosis.

Day 3: certificate. The certificate arrives as the regulations require. HR records the absence with start date, degree and expected duration, and checks whether the person is in the first year of service (three weeks of salary) or which step of the scale applies.

Day 7: keep in touch. A short call from the manager: how are you, what can we do, is there anything at work that weighs on you? Where there is a conflict, this is the moment to name it. Employees who hear from their company while they are ill come back sooner.

Day 14: plan the return. Is partial capacity possible, with reduced hours or adjusted tasks? The doctor can certify it when the company makes an offer. A 50 per cent return after three weeks beats a 100 per cent return after three months.

Day 30: deadlines. The waiting period of daily sickness benefit insurance usually runs 30 days; the claim to the insurer is filed as the policy requires, often earlier. After 30 days of uninterrupted incapacity the company may report the person to the disability insurance (IV) for early detection, and likewise after repeated short absences within a year. Early detection is not a pension application; it opens advice before the job is lost. Many sickness benefit insurers offer case management from this point, and the company should take it.

Return day: the conversation. A 20-minute return conversation: welcome back, where the team stands, what has changed, what the person needs. It is the most effective tool in absence management, and it costs nothing.

What a company can change

The AXA study shows that companies with a leadership culture built on freedom and personal responsibility report far fewer mental health absences: 27 per cent against 43 per cent. The same companies more often name high workload as the trigger, the others more often a lack of appreciation. Both can be managed.

Three measures that need no budget: first, an absence statistic that reaches the management table every month, by department and duration; second, a return conversation after every absence of three days or more; third, a clear rule on who can be approached about a conflict before it turns into a certificate. The fourth measure costs money and pays for itself: a daily sickness benefit contract that sets out the waiting period, the premium split and the equivalence in writing, so that sick pay never becomes a dispute.

Conclusion

8.6 days per job is the average, and an SME shapes its own figure more than the statistics suggest. The law fixes how long salary continues and when a notice is void. The first 30 days fix how long the absence lasts. Stay in contact, use partial capacity and know the deadlines of the sickness benefit insurer and the disability insurance, and employees come back sooner, sparing you the most expensive absence of all: the one that ends with a lost job.

Recording absences, calculating sick pay, filing and settling daily benefit claims: all of that is part of our HR administration and payroll services, at published fees. Our guide to outsourcing HR in a Swiss SME shows when it pays off, and if you are building a Swiss team from abroad, start with hiring in Switzerland. A first conversation about your absences takes 30 minutes: book an intro call.