The employee absenteeism rate in Romania for 2015, reflecting the percentage of days of absence out of the total working days in a year, was 2.2%, a slight decrease to the 2014 rate of 2.4%, according to the PwC Saratoga study. The rate generated a cost of 703 euro per employee within the general market, with variations for particular markets such as retail, where the costs were lower (440 euro per employee) and pharmaceuticals, where the costs were higher (1,132 euros per employee), rated proportionally for the average wages of each sector.
„The absenteeism rate in Romania, which includes both unmotivated leave, as well as medical leave, is similar to the rates of other countries in the region. Even so, absenteeism continues to generate significant costs for companies. In this context, exploring the causes leading to absenteeism becomes a more and more important task for employers, who need to use specific human resources capabilities (such as periodic assessments of employee satisfaction) and to develop programs for overcoming absenteeism (such as motivational or employee wellbeing programs)”, stated Horaţiu Cocheci, Senior Manager, Human Resources Consulting Team Leader, PwC Romania.
Human capital return on investment (measured as the number of monetary units generated by an employee for each monetary unit invested in their salary) remains at the same level as last year’s (1.30). However, the study reveals an increase of human capital return on investment in the retail and industrial production sectors, generated by a better financial performance of the companies involved (i.e., an increase in revenue). At the other end of the spectrum, the banking and pharmaceutical sectors have seen a decrease of human capital return on investment, against a more accelerated increase in costs compared to revenues.
The financial investment in employee development programs, another chapter covered by the study, increased by almost 50% to last year, although the number of hours spent for these programs has remained constant (17-18 hours per employee per year).
The highest number of training hours per employee were reported by banks, while the largest investments in this type of programs were made by companies within the pharmaceutical sector (over 1000 euro per employee).
“We are witnessing a rethinking of training and development programs, as companies prefer to invest in more expensive programs with a higher return on investment on a long term. Therefore, they are trying to use more ‘train the trainer’ type of programs, which aim at preparing the employees for subsequent delivery of training within the organisation. Furthermore, we noticed a stronger preference for professional and personal development programs (of coaching or mentoring) which usually generate higher costs compared to the traditional training programs”, mentioned Nicoleta Dumitru, Manager, Human Resources Consulting Team, PwC Romania.
The PwC Saratoga Romania 2015 study comprises exhaustive data on human capital metrics, collected from 64 participant companies from five economic sectors (pharmaceutics, industrial production, retail, banking and financial leasing).
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