Understanding your Norwegian sick leave reports

This article explains how the two Norwegian absence reports in Simployer work — the Norwegian Sick Leave Report (the annual Excel report) and the SSB Report (the quarterly egenmelding report for Statistics Norway). It covers how the numbers are calculated and walks through the most common situations that cause confusion.

Which report are you looking at?

There are two separate reports, and they work very differently.

If you generated an Excel file covering a full year with both doctor-certified and self-certified leave — that's the Norwegian Sick Leave Report. If you generated a one-page PDF covering one quarter showing only egenmelding — that's the SSB Report.

The Norwegian Sick Leave Report

How the agreed work days (M) are calculated

The column labelled Agreed work days (M) shows how many days each gender group was scheduled to work in that month. It is not the same as "days actually worked" — sick days are included in M, not subtracted from it. This is a NAV requirement: agreed days represent the schedule, regardless of whether the employee showed up.

What counts as a scheduled day? The system goes through each day of the month and keeps only the days the employee was supposed to be at work according to their work week schedule. It then removes public holidays, company-wide days off, and any days outside their employment period.

Part-time employees and the work week This is the most common source of confusion with the M number. The agreed days are calculated from the employee's work week schedule — not from the employment percentage field on their contract. A 50% employee whose work week schedule was never updated (still showing the default Monday–Friday, full hours) will be counted as full-time in the report.

Example — Olav, 50% employment

Olav is contracted at 50% but his work week was never changed from the default (Monday–Friday, 8 hours). He is sick for the whole of January — 20 working days.

Because the report reads the work week, not the employment percentage, it sees a full-time schedule. His agreed days for January = 22. His sick days = 20. Absence percentage = 90.9%.

If his work week had been set to half-length days (4 hours against an 8-hour normal day), each day would count as 0.5. Agreed days = 11. Sick days = 10. Absence percentage = still 90.9%.

The percentage is the same either way — but the actual numbers look very different. If your part-time employees are showing unexpectedly high absence day counts, check whether their work week schedule reflects their part-time hours.

How the sick days (S) are calculated

The Sick days column (S) shows how many absence days each group had that month, counted in full-day equivalents.

For each absence day in a leave, the system multiplies two things together:

• The graded percentage — if the leave is 50% graded (the employee works half-time and is sick half-time), each day counts as 0.5
• The day weight — the scheduled hours for that day divided by a normal full working day (typically 8 hours)

Weekends and public holidays are excluded from S — only scheduled work days count.

Example — Kari, graded sick leave

Kari is 100% employed. She is on 50% graded sick leave from Monday 6 January to Monday 27 January — 22 calendar days, 16 scheduled work days.

Each work day counts as 0.5 (the graded percentage). Her sick days for January = 16 × 0.5 = 8 days.

You might expect this to put her in the "4–16 days" bucket. It does not — see the section on duration buckets below.

Duration buckets: 1–3 days, 4–16 days, 16+ days

Every illness is placed in one of three buckets. The bucket is decided by the calendar length of the whole illness — not by the number of absence days, not by the graded percentage, not by part-time hours. Just raw calendar days from start to finish.

Back to Kari

Kari's leave ran for 22 calendar days. Even though her absence days came out to 8 (after the graded 50% calculation), the bucket is based on 22 calendar days. She lands in the 16+ days bucket.

This surprises many people. The logic is that NAV classifies illnesses by how long they lasted, not by how many days the employee missed work. A three-week illness is a three-week illness, even if the employee was at work half the time.

How continuation works — and why it matters

NAV counts illnesses, not leave requests. If an employee files an egenmelding, then extends it with a doctor's note, that is still one illness — even though two separate leaves are in the system.

Simployer automatically links two leaves into a chain when:

• They belong to the same employee
• There is no working day between the end of one and the start of the next (weekends and public holidays between them don't count as a gap)
• The leave types are related (egenmelding and sick leave count as the same family)

A chain is treated as one illness from the first day of the first leave to the last day of the last leave. The calendar length of the whole chain decides the bucket — including any weekend gaps in the middle.

Example — Trine: egenmelding followed by a doctor's note

Trine files an egenmelding from Monday 10 March to Wednesday 12 March (3 days). She goes to a doctor, who signs her off until Friday 21 March. She creates a new sick leave starting Thursday 13 March.

There is no working day between Wednesday 12 March and Thursday 13 March, so the system links the two leaves automatically. The chain runs from 10 March to 21 March — 12 calendar days, including the weekend of 15–16 March.

Bucket: 4–16 days — not 1–3 days, even though the egenmelding on its own was only 3 days.

The report counts one self-certified case and one doctor-certified case, both in the 4–16 column. Self-certified days = 3. Doctor-certified days = 7 (the work days from Thursday 13 to Friday 21, excluding the weekend).

Example — Bjorn: three short leaves that become one long one

Bjorn logs:

• Egenmelding: Monday 6 January to Wednesday 8 January (3 days)
• Sick leave: Thursday 9 January to Friday 17 January — automatically linked, no gap between Wednesday and Thursday
• Sick leave: Monday 20 January to Friday 24 January — automatically linked, no gap over the weekend

The chain runs from 6 January to 24 January = 19 calendar days.

Bucket: 16+ days — even though no individual leave was long enough to reach 16 days on its own. The three leaves together form one illness, and the bucket reflects the total length of that illness.

The "over 8 weeks" column

There is an extra column within the 16+ bucket for illnesses that lasted more than 56 calendar days (57 or more = over 8 weeks).

One important behaviour: when you generate the report, the system looks at the illness as it stands at that moment. If you generate the Q1 report in April and an employee is still sick, their illness might not yet have crossed the 8-week mark. If you generate the same Q1 report again in June — after their illness has clearly exceeded 8 weeks — the new generation retroactively places that case in the "over 8 weeks" column.

This is not an error. NAV's own guidance says: "It is not always possible to foresee whether a sickness absence will last at least 8 weeks by the end of the quarter." The report is designed to be regenerated as circumstances become clearer.

The 3 weeks before birth

If a female employee is on doctor-certified sick leave in the three weeks immediately before giving birth, those days are automatically reclassified as parental leave (shown in the "Other leave" column), not sick leave. This is a Norwegian legal requirement — the three weeks before birth are considered parental leave under NAV's rules, regardless of whether a sick note was issued.

The reclassification happens automatically as long as the employee has a child with a birth date recorded in their profile.

Example — Astrid

Astrid's child was born on 20 March 2025. The pre-birth window runs from 27 February to 19 March.

She was on doctor-certified sick leave from 25 February to 19 March (23 calendar days). The days from 25–26 February (before the window) stay as sick leave. The days from 27 February to 19 March (inside the window) are moved to "Other leave."

After reclassification, only 2 calendar days remain as sick leave. The bucket becomes 1–3 days, not 4–16.

If Astrid asks why her sick leave appears as "Other leave", the answer is that Norwegian law requires it — it is not a system error.

Note: this reclassification only applies to doctor-certified sick leave. Egenmelding in the pre-birth window stays as egenmelding.

Pending leaves and the unapproved absence column

Leaves that have not yet been approved by a manager appear in the Unapproved absence column, regardless of what type they are. They do not count towards sick days or the absence percentage.

Example — Kjell

Kjell logged 2 days of egenmelding for 5–6 March. His manager hasn't approved it yet.

The report shows those 2 days in "Unapproved absence." Once the manager approves the leave and the report is regenerated, the 2 days move to the "1–3 self-certified" column.

If you see a higher than expected number in the unapproved absence column, it usually means some leave requests are waiting for approval in your team.

The absence percentage

The percentage shown in the report is:

Absence percentage = sick days (S) ÷ agreed days (M) × 100

It is calculated separately for each gender group. The TOTAL row percentage is not an average of the gender percentages — it is calculated by adding all sick days across groups and dividing by all agreed days across groups.

Why an employee might not appear in the report

If an employee is missing from the report entirely, the most common reasons are:

• Their office does not have Norway set as the country. The system needs to recognise the employee as Norwegian to include them. The most reliable way to check this is to look at the country setting on the office they are assigned to.
• They were employed by a different legal entity or country-specific employment, and that employment record has a non-Norwegian country set — which overrides the office setting.
• They were excluded by the department or employee filter used when the report was generated.

Former employees are included in the report for the period they were employed, even if they have since left the company.

The SSB Report

What it covers

The SSB Report covers egenmelding only — self-certified sick leave. It covers one quarter at a time and produces four numbers per gender group: persons, cases, calendar days, and man-days.

The four numbers explained

Persons counts how many unique employees used egenmelding in the quarter. An employee with five egenmelding leaves counts as one person.

Cases counts each egenmelding leave separately. Unlike the Norwegian Sick Leave Report, the SSB Report does not chain linked leaves together. Three separate egenmelding leaves = three cases, even if they were filed one after another.

Calendar days is the total number of calendar days covered by egenmelding leaves in the quarter. If a leave crosses the quarter boundary, only the days within the quarter are counted.

Example: A leave from 28 March to 2 April counts as 4 calendar days in Q1 (28–31 March) and 2 calendar days in Q2 (1–2 April).

Man-days is the total egenmelding absence in full-day equivalents, using the same work week weighting as the Norwegian Sick Leave Report. Each absence work day is weighted by its scheduled hours against a normal full day. The employment percentage field is not used — the same part-time work week note applies here.

Custom egenmelding leave types

The SSB Report automatically picks up the built-in self-certified leave type. If your company uses a custom leave type for egenmelding (for example a type called "Egenmelding extended" or similar), you need to select that type explicitly when generating the report. Otherwise, leaves of that type will not be counted.

If the report is showing fewer egenmelding cases than expected, check whether the affected leaves use a custom leave type that was not selected at generation.

Common questions

"An employee's absence percentage looks too high" Check their work week schedule. If a part-time employee has a full default work week (Monday–Friday, full hours), they are being counted as full-time. The fix is to set a part-time work week that reflects their actual scheduled hours.

"I see sick days in a row, but cases = 0" This is correct for months where the illness started in a previous month (or a previous year). The case is counted once, in the month the illness began. Days flow into every month the illness touches, but the case count does not repeat.

"A short egenmelding is in the 4–16 bucket, not 1–3" The egenmelding was probably followed by a sick leave with no working day in between, creating a chain. The bucket reflects the total calendar length of the chain, not just the egenmelding portion.

"I generated the same report twice and got different numbers" Each time you generate a report, it re-reads all current data. If any leaves were approved, edited, extended, or deleted between the two runs, the numbers will differ. This is intentional — the report reflects the data as it exists at the time of generation.

"Three weeks of sick leave before giving birth appear as Other leave" This is correct. Norwegian law classifies the last three weeks before birth as parental leave, not sick leave. The report follows this rule automatically.

"The SSB Report shows no egenmelding, but I know we have some" The most common cause is a custom leave type for egenmelding that was not selected when generating the report. Regenerate and add the custom type in the leave type selection step.