*3.3. Costs for Sick Leave*

The question to be answered in the following subchapter is: What does an hour and resulting from this a day of sick leave in an office cost? The winter period is considered in particular, since the frequency of sicknesses caused by low air humidity is highest during this period, and the effect on hygrothermal comfort due to indoor greenery is most significant.

Based on the conditions explained in Section 1 and on data from Statistik Austria from 2017, the average annual income of employed persons in Austria is 38,828 euros. If these costs are divided by the usual annual hourly rate of 1720 h per year, the average labor costs per hour per person are 22.57 euros. This annual hourly rate factor already includes the annual vacation days and public holidays. This results in labor costs of 180.60 euros for a regular 8-h workday. Table 1 contains the results of these calculations.


**Table 1.** Average labor costs of employed persons in Austria 2017 [54].

The company incurs direct costs in the form of wage costs per person and working day of 180.60 euros. These costs represent only the direct costs as explained in Section 1. Not included are costs for, e.g., overtime of colleagues to compensate the workload or costs that arise from the delay of projects. Moreover, indirect costs for the health service as well as insurance are not considered. The actual costs for one sick day per employee are therefore significantly higher. Due to the existing data situation and the difficulties in the determination in particular of the indirect costs in the context of these present investigations, only the pure wage costs which must be further paid are taken into account.

Accordingly, the answer to the above question of the cost of one day of absence of an office employee can be answered: There are direct costs for continued payment of wages in the amount of 180.60 euros per day. Determining the indirect costs of absence is very complex and is therefore not quantified in this article.
