In recent years, absenteeism from work has ceased to be just an indicator in statistical reports and has become a serious labor problem due to the dimensions it has reached. In turn, this increase in the number of workers who, for justified or unjustified reasons, do not go to work has caused a collateral effect: the massive hiring of private detectives to investigate possible fraud in medical leave.
According to sources in the sector, since the pandemic the number of assignments by companies and medical insurance companies has grown exponentially to account for almost 80% of the investigative work of private detectives.
Work absenteeism and its meaning. Work absenteeism occurs when an employee does not show up to work, whether this absence is justified or not. However, this concept is increasingly being used as a synonym for absenteeism due to temporary disability (medical leave), something that is not correct because there is an important nuance.
Medical leave is a justified absence due to temporary disability due to medical prescription from a Social Security doctor, while not showing up at work without justified cause is a decision made by the employee unilaterally. The difference between one reason and another is obvious.
The figures are worrying. According to data from the Report ‘Absenteeism from work in the second quarter of 2025’ prepared by Randstad, they warn that total absenteeism in Spain has caused the loss of 7% of agreed work hours. However, if this figure is broken down into justified and unjustified, we find that absences due to temporary disability (medical leave) account for 5.5% of those hours. Therefore, the unjustified ones affect 1.5% of the agreed hours.
Taking into account that according to the EPA the number of employed people amounted to 22.27 million contributors, the data from the Randstad study indicate that, on average, 1,558,809 people did not go to their workplace daily, of which, 1,224,778 people did not go because they were on medical leave and, therefore, for a justified medical reason.
Total work absenteeism and absenteeism due to temporary disability. Source: Randstad
How long does a medical leave last in Spain? It is true that it is a doctor who grants medical leave to a patient. However, the doctor does not decide how long this leave lasts. This calculation is estimated from a Social Security database in which factors such as the patient’s profession, age or pathology are taken into account.
According to data from ‘Absenteeism Barometer for the first half of 2025′prepared by Mutua Navarra, the average number of sick days in 2025 is 31.07 days. Leaves of less than 15 days accounted for almost 73% of the total number of registered absences (representing 8.9% of the total days not worked) while those leaving for 12 months accounted for 1.85% (32.5% of the total days not worked). That is, the vast majority of absences for medical reasons are 15 days or less.
As the authors of the Mutua Navarra report point out, “the problem of absenteeism is not so much due to the number of people who do not go to work, but rather to the excessive duration of sick leave”, something that the worker cannot control since it is a Social Security doctor who determines whether medical recovery has occurred.
Detective Boom. Given the increase in times and cases of sick leave, companies have taken measures to avoid fraud, and since 2021, the hiring of private detectives to investigate their workers has skyrocketed. Jordi Briñol, director of Brinvest Detectives, confirms that “currently we can perfectly well be talking about the fact that, in a standard detective office, these requests represent 80% of the requests.”
As highlighted by Centinela Detectives Privados, companies and mutual societies resort to their services when they already have well-founded signs of fraud, some of which originate from “rumours, information, suspicions” from colleagues or from the abnormal prolongation of medical leave. “It may also be due to the attitude that the employee has maintained prior to that sick leave situation, in which he almost expressed his intentions due to internal friction,” his spokesperson told us, “many times it is almost to confirm the obvious thing that they already have, rather than the fact of investigating it, it is to obtain proof, because the company cannot proceed with a dismissal for the simple fact that a worker is on sick leave.”
According to these detective offices, these previous indications already determine that a high number of cases that are investigated end up being proven to be fraud. The cost of these services for a complete investigation ranges between 1,500 and 4,000 euros depending on the case, which means that companies only investigate those cases in which it is evident that fraud is occurring in sick leave.
Criticism from the unions. The proliferation of private detectives has not gone unnoticed by unions, which denounce a tendency to criminalize sick employees. Reyes Solaz, national secretary of the UGT of Catalonia, points out that “we are concerned that sick workers will be criminalized when what companies should do is reinforce prevention and medical care.”
According to the union representative, mutual societies and companies dedicate more and more budget to private surveillance than to diagnostic tests to speed up reinstatements, “the real problem is the increase in waiting lists in public health, and that lengthens the times of diagnosis and treatment and therefore medical leaves are lengthened”, distributing responsibilities to both Social Security and medical mutual societies.
Solaz criticized the mutual insurance companies that invest part of the public resources assigned to them from the Security to hire detectives, “both workers and companies pay a part of our salaries to have that mutual insurance company for when we have a work accident or an occupational disease. The mutual insurance companies spend it on detectives, but then they do not hire the necessary professionals to do the tests and give you the care you need to return to work.”
Transparency with fraud. Although it is true that the detective offices recognize that the vast majority of the cases they investigate end up confirming fraud in sick leave, from UGT “we ask for more transparency and to know what percentage of cases are investigated and how many of those are really fraud.”
That, for example, 90% of the sick leave investigated turn out to be fraudulent, does not imply that 90% of the sick leave are fraudulent, because only the few cases in which there is prior knowledge that fraud already exists are investigated. If the exact percentage of sick leave that is investigated is not known, it is impossible to know the real dimension of this fraud or whether fraud in medical sick leave is the real problem of absenteeism from work or, on the other hand, the saturation of medical services.
In WorldOfSoftware | Fraud in medical leave: the “discharges” are increasing as companies try to combat absenteeism
Imagen | Unsplash (Anuja Tilj, Owen Beard)
