Staff at small businesses are too loyal to pull "sickies", according to a Wanganui business leader.
Whanganui Employers' Chamber of Commerce president Jenny Duncan was commenting after the release of the Wellness in the Workplace report, which showed workers took 4.5 sick days a year on average.
The report said those in manual jobs and the public sector stayed home most, and put the cost of employee absences at $1.26 billion a year.
One in five employers also cited staff "seeing paid sick days as an entitlement" and suspected employees weren't really sick. But about half said genuinely sick employees would soldier on at work.