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

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

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.

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.

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