Sick employees are costing the UK economy over £241bn every year — and things may only get worse as AI takes over

TechRadar's research reveals that sick employees are costing the UK economy over £241 bn each year, and the report warns the burden could worsen as AI takes over workplace tasks. For website owners, this surge in AI‑driven automation means a growing proportion of traffic will be generated by bots mimicking human workers—especially chat‑bots, content generators, and virtual assistants deployed to replace sick staff. Such AI traffic can inflate analytics, skew engagement metrics, and increase server load, while also raising compliance concerns if bots interact with user‑generated content or personal data. Ignoring these bots may lead to misallocated ad spend and distorted SEO insights. **Actionable tips:** 1. **Implement granular bot detection** in your analytics stack (e.g., use fingerprinting and behavior‑based scoring) to separate AI‑generated visits from genuine human users. 2. **Update your llms.txt** file to explicitly list the AI agents you permit (e.g., “OpenAI‑ChatGPT”, “Google‑Bard”) and block unknown crawlers, reducing unwanted AI scrape and load. 3. **Monitor server performance** for spikes during typical work‑hour periods; a sudden rise in API calls or page requests may indicate AI bots replacing sick employees in corporate workflows, prompting you to adjust rate limits or CAPTCHAs accordingly.