---
title: "How do I analyse sickness absence?"
slug: "how-do-i-analyse-sickness-absence"
updated: 2026-06-10T11:22:33Z
published: 2026-06-10T11:22:33Z
canonical: "help.cintra.co.uk/how-do-i-analyse-sickness-absence"
---

> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://help.cintra.co.uk/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# How do I analyse sickness absence?

**Absence Analysis** is a feature in **Cintra iQ** that enables more powerful and easier analysis of your sickness data, enabling different views of the data to be created quicklly.

This includes rolling-year analysis, breakdowns of absence by departments, monitoring of long-term sickness, Bradford Factors, lost-time reports, etc.

Once an **Absence Analysis** definition is created, an **Extract** is produced. This is a set of data for a defined time period that is stored for future retrieval when you want to run a report on attendance over that period.

One of the advantages of this technique over traditional reporting is that you can collect together several extracts for different time periods, monthly extracts throughout the year for example, and then report on this data cumulatively, with ease.

## What are the concepts?

The basic idea behind **Absence Analysis** is to set up a definition that specifies which employees you want to analyse sickness for, and in what way.

The procedure is to:

- Extract data for the time period you are interested in
- Potentially edit that data
- Report on the data

Each **Extract** has an associated **Time Period**. Once an **Extract** has been created, you can report on the data in many different ways.

## Absence Analysis

There are **3** parts to the **Absence Analysis**:

| Name | Description |
| --- | --- |
| **Time Periods** | Time Periods are simply the periods of time you want the data for. These are simply defined using From and To dates, and there can be any number of them, from a single period (e.g. 01 Jan to 31 Dec of any specific year) upwards. |
| **Dimensions** | Dimensions define how you want the data analysed. For example, you may want to see an analysis of sickness for each **Organisation Unit**, for people on different types of contract, for permanent vs. temporary staff, for all the different **Sickness Reasons,** etc. As long as the item you want to analyse by is represented by a field in **Cintra iQ**, you can create an **Analysis Dimension** on it. |
| **Metrics** | Metrics are the actual data you want to see in your analysis. There are **14** metrics currently defined in **Absence Analysis**. The metrics are essentially the column headings that appear on the finished analysis report, and are selected at the time that you run the report, so can be changed as desired. The **14** current metrics are: |

## Metrics

| Metric | Derived From |
| --- | --- |
| **Working Days Available** | Working Patterns |
| **Lost Time Rate** | Working Patterns and Sickness data |
| **Working Days Lost Short** **Term** | Working Patterns, Sickness data and Banded Days settings |
| **Working Days Lost Long** **Term** | Working Patterns, Sickness data and Banded Days settings |
| **Total Working Days Lost** | Working Patterns and Sickness data |
| **Spells Short Term** | Banded Days settings and Sickness data |
| **Spells Long Term** | Banded Days settings and Sickness data |
| **Total Spells** | Sickness Data |
| **Spells Medically Certified** | Sickness Data |
| **Spells Self Certified** | Sickness Data |
| **Spells Pregnancy Related** | Sickness Data |
| **Spells Disability Related** | Sickness Data |
| **Average FTE** | FTE calculations |
| **Nominal Cost FTE** | FTE calculations and costing data |