4 Ways Group Income Protection Tackles Sickness and Absenteeism

Group Income Protection Insurance insures a proportion of your employees’ salaries and pay them a monthly benefit if they can’t work due to accident or sickness. The core cover is primarily designed to provide sick pay, but corporate schemes also come with a range of benefits that can help reduce employee sickness and absenteeism before it becomes a problem. These programs help by offering employees different kinds of support that are accessible even when they aren’t making a claim on their policy.

Policies are designed to offer support beyond paying a claim, helping both employers and employees implement positive changes, and by offering services that help employees tackle their health problems head-on.

Group Income Protection Benefits That Tackle Sickness and Absenteeism

While an insurance policy like Income Protection may not prevent accident or sickness, it can help employers minimise avoidable absences and better manage employee sickness in a number of ways.

Employee Assistance Programmes

Most employee benefits – including Group Income Protection – will offer what is known as an Employee Assistance Programme. These programmes are formed of a range of additional services and benefits designed to support and help employees, such as:

• Counselling
• Cognitive behavioural therapy sessions
• General support and advice helplines
• Financial advice
• Career advice
• Legal advice
• Rehabilitation services / physiotherapy
• Career support and coaching
• Support for managers and employers.

Typically, these services can be used by employees at any time, regardless of whether they’re claiming Income Protection benefits.

These beneficial programmes can not only support employees with poor health, but also prevent instances of poor health in some circumstances. For instance, counselling services can help employees better manage stress and avoid burnout that requires time off work to recover.

These services may also include consultations for employers to help them make productive changes to their business that put focus on employee health and wellbeing. This may involve highlighting health and safety issues around the workplace or making arrangements for an employee that’s not in great health to continue working on their own terms.

HR support services can help line managers and other bosses learn how to deal with employee absences by liaising with the absent worker, also.

Back to Work Top-Up Benefits

A unique aspect of many Income Protection policies is that cover doesn’t have to end as soon as the employee returns to work.

Many insurers offer back-to-work benefits for employees returning to work after a claim, paying out a proportion of their insured cover. These benefits are designed to top up their salary if they’re having to work part-time or work at a reduced salary as they phase back into the workplace.

This can help retain a member of staff who is only partially recovered, and would otherwise have to drop out of the workforce to take on a less stressful / lower impact / part-time role elsewhere because they aren’t ready to go back full-time.

Resources for Healthy Living

A lot of group sick pay insurance policies offer a range of services and/or resources to help employees manage their health. These may be part of an Employee Assistance Programme, offered independently or given as an optional add-on for increased premiums.

A few examples of some of these services include:

• Online information hub with health & medical guidance
• Health risk assessment tools
• Medical advice helpline
• Virtual GP.

These types of services can be used to either help employees recover after a health problem or better manage their health on a day-to-day basis to prevent health problems in the future.

Online guides and medical helplines can help employees better manage their health as well as provide them with information on medical conditions they may be diagnosed with.

Meanwhile, Virtual GPs can speed up a diagnosis progress, catching red flags that may lead to a more severe health problem if not addressed and all potentially faster than the NHS could offer.

Financial Support

Money worries are one of the biggest blights on the UK workforce. Our 2025 Employee Benefits Survey found money worries to be the top cause of stress, with 80% of employees admitting it has a knock-on effect for their productivity at work.

With household spending rising and savings very low, being out of work for as little as a few weeks could mean financial difficulties for some people. Such a precarious financial situation can lead to a lot of daily stress, which in turn will affect mental health.

Group Income Protection is one way in which employers can help relieve their workers of some of this stress.

Knowing that there is financial support available if they need it can provide a lot of comfort for individuals that maybe don’t have the resources to pay their bills if they can’t work.

Nadeem Farid
Head of Employee Benefits at Drewberry