Agenda item

Surjit Nagra, HR Business Partner, updated the Committee on the Council’s performance in reducing sickness absence, which the Committee had requested should be reported to all future meetings.  It was noted that since the last report to Committee in October there had been an increase in days lost in August (+0.2 days) and September (+0.1 days), whilst October had remained static at 0.8 sick days per FTE. No explanation for the rise in sick days had been identified.

The Committee considered a summary of the balanced scorecards by Directorate, up to October 2014, which indicated that Slough BC’s absence  was reducing. The overall management score for the Council was 74.9 which was a significant improvement when compared to previous score of 64.6 in October. This demonstrated that the Council was positively managing sickness absence.

Managers would  continue to undertake formal meetings with employees when trigger points were hit, and the Committee was advised that 97.9% of managers and supervisors had attended Sickness Absence Training.

12% of Slough workforce had met the 6 day trigger period over the last 6 months, and data available through the scorecard indicated that staff being managed through the formal process following this trigger had increased from 39.2% in August to 58.3% in October. Whilst this was a positive trend, it also demonstrated that there remained room for improvement.

Of the staff that had met the 6 day trigger, 61.9% had been referred to Occupational Health. However, there remained a number of staff who had not attended their Occupational Health appointments, although this did include a staff member who had subsequently been dismissed, whilst a review of another staff member was currently ongoing.

The Wellbeing directorate showed the greatest number of days lost, although it was highlighted that sickness absence within this workforce would be higher due to the nature of the work undertaken by staff, i.e. frontline support to vulnerable clients. A review of the absence target had therefore been undertaken, and had been found to be unrealistic. As such, a revised target of 9.4 days lost had been set for March 2015 for the Wellbeing directorate.

The Officer discussed the most common reasons for absence during the period 1^st May 2014 to 31^st October 2014, with skeletal, breaks/sprains having the highest levels of absence, common in the Wellbeing Directorate. To help prevent this, additional physiotherapy support had been arranged through the Occupational Health service for this group of staff. This included early intervention and specialist staff clinics & sessions to manage aches and pains and prevent exacerbation of musculoskeletal disorders. Examples of this additional support included organised back care clinics which involved a mix of Pilates, Yoga and Functional Exercises focussing on the promotion of back care, flexibility and core stability.

Mental health problems such as stress, depression and anxiety contributed to a significant number of days lost. To combat this, work was being developed as part of the Employee Wellbeing Project to identify initiatives via the Community Mental Health team, to identify mechanisms for staff to cope with stress and assistance for managers to address mental health problems.

The ‘other’ category contributed to a significant number of days lost, however work with managers was being undertaken to ensure that managers continued to look more closely and better record the true reasons for staff absences.

The Committee requested details about on the timeliness of Return to Work interviews, and were advised that these were not currently recorded centrally, however a snapshot survey may be possible. Members asked that this be considered and a report brought to a future meeting. 

Resolved -  (a)   That the report be noted.

(b)   That a Return to Work interview snapshot report be undertaken.