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Posted By Liz Johnston
Dear All,
The level of sickness absence is a matter close to my Chief Executives heart. We have done a number of initiatives which includes revising our sickness policy, introduce tight management procedures (such as compulsory return to work interviews) and the introduction of tight sickness trigger points. We have also provided compulsory training to all managers and are now auditing the procedures to identify where to identify what’s going on. We have increased referrals through OH (although many of the issues are management ones) and increased our checks on new starters.
The absence level is still not falling and the management team want to introduce the issue of an individual’s sickness into the decision process of redundancies! My question is whether any other organisations have introduced sickness absence into determining who will be made redundant. Also what other significant changes have been introduced to attempt to reduce your sickness levels and how effective have they been.
I have to provide some examples by Friday, so a prompt response would be welcomed.
Thanks in advance
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Posted By biddy
i am sure there are others on here who are better qualified to answer this but i will start the ball rolling
we recently had sickness abscence running at near 9% so what we did was to reduce the amount of time a person had before they would be interviewed and given there first warning it went from 10 days to six days and abscence reduced to about 5%
regarding your redundancy procedure could you not do a matrix
including
persons time with the company
work attitude
how skillfull they are
how many different jobs they can do
absenteeism record
giving a score for each one
hope this helps
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Posted By Bill Elliott
I was of the impression that it is posts that are made redundant and normally the job must have disappeared to count as redundancy. It seems a litle dubious that sickness absence (granted a serious matter) is being considered for choosing employees? for redundancy. Or am I completely up the wrong tree here. It does strike me though that your issue is an HR and management one rather than a H&S issue.
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Posted By Adrian Clifton
Liz.
Before using sickness absence in the redundancies process, I would collate all sickness absence information to look for particular trends or most frequently cited reasons for the absenteeism.
Having identified the most common reasons, see if they are work related, why does the work cause problems and look for solutions to reduce the cause(s).
Is morale low? If yes, why? (Job security, excessive performance targets, working conditions).
Are working practices contributing to illness/injuries? If yes, why? (Are working practices as good as they could be? Are working practices monitored and adhered to?).
I accept that there may be individual cases where absenteeism is purely for absenteeisms sake. However in the majority of csases I would suggest, that there are underlying reasons for the absence, that you should be able to resolve them without the threat of redundancies which will add to the problem.
By using sickness absence as a criteria for determining redundancies, you may lose some of your best members of the workforce.
Adrian
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Posted By Lumpy
Why is your sickness so high ... is there any conection with the working environment .. stress for example ? We recently introduced the HSE Stress Mngt Standards and found that the area (100+employees) with the highest sick leave, was also the area responding with the highest stressors. We are hoping that tackling those stressors may reduce sickness absence (by some degree).
With regards linking sickness with redundancy, although I'm no expert, I believe you would very foolish to use this measure. I have no doubt your employees could find some way to show they were discriminated against.
Lumpy.
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Posted By Kieran J Duignan
Liz
There is a fair amount of reliable research that indicates the levels of absence are related to motivation. So, I refer to two observations in your question
1. 'many of the issues are management ones': to a chartered occupational psychologist, this is as clear as can be that you yourself belief that improving motivation by much improved leadership should be a priority and relatively economic option - the Apter Motivation Style Profiler and the Apter Leadership Profiler offer superb value in this respect - I would be pleased to let your Chief Executive try them out free of charge on himself (no kidding - after all, I am a taxpayer in the area he administers, so I'm paying directly for the absentee level you refer to!)
2. 'management team want to introduce the issue of an individual’s sickness into the decision process of redundancies'. As a Chartered Fellow of the CIPD, I can only observe that this is more guaranteed to increase the level of claims of unfair dismissal than it is to reduce the level of absence. Do advise them to try the Apter questionnaire before you waste council tax payers on this folly.
I've absolutely no commercial link with the publishers of the Apter tools; simply that, in 20+ years' research about absence management, I've never found anything as productive as these instruments.
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Posted By Lorraine Shuker
Where there are large numbers of people who all do the same job then the role isn't going but some of the people who fulfill that role.
A company I know of used absence as part of a scoring matrix in choosing individuals for redundancy as mentioned above and they did indeed get one or two unfair dismissal claims.
As to reducing absence I am looking at this issue at the moment too and and trying to uncover the underlying causes of absence.
For example a very large percentage is down to colds/flu/gastric upsets. We are a contact centre with overcrowding issues, hot desking, sharing of headsets so I am trying to push for improvements to working environment and cleanliness with a hopeful benefit on reduced absence.
Of course if your orginisation is in a position where redundancy is a possibility and your management are not ethical then your absence problem may be a morale problem masqerading as illness.
How about an employee attitude survey where staff can express their true feelings about the issue with guaranteed anonimity?
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Posted By Kieran J Duignan
Lorraine's expression 'an employee attitude survey where staff can express their true feelings about the issue' may well contain an indication of how 'absence management' is a product of the culture of some organisations.
Who determines what 'the issue' is? What language is used to characterise the 'issue'?
For several years, I worked as a counsellor across several organisations, mainly addressing 'stress' problems. They all shared historically high and escalating problems of redundancy yet 'absence' was a significant problem only in those where deep-seated management-staff conflict was embedded. (To illustrate, in an organisation which de-recognised unions, a robust group of staff 'retaliated' by sending the incoming Chief Executive to Coventry (the psychological version), when he tried to speak to them).
Where employee motivation is genuinely cultivated every day by competent leaders, people don't need the expense of a survey to express the truth as they experience it - they speak it readily knowing they are listened to with respect.
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Posted By jackw.
Hi, sorry to be a pain but I thought this was an H&S forum not HR. Surely this is a personnel issue!
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Posted By John Lewis
Liz
Something which worked for me, although only for injuries in work, was to visit the injured party at home as soon after the event as possible. This meant I got a first hand report of the incident and gave me an opportunity to see if there was anything the company could do to help. Certainly over a two year period the number of RIDDOR's fell by a big percentage. The entire factory knew I would visit and perhaps there was less incentive to "take the p***s" out of the system. Very rarely did I find the house empty.
There will be some who think this is sneaky, but overall the general feeling amongst the 95% of fundamentally good people in the factory was that something was being done about the 5% of bad people.
Bear in mind this only applied to "injured" people, not "sick" people. Might be worth a try.
Regards
John
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