I’ve been asked to look at sickness absence monitoring for our small company of around fourty employees to monitor unauthorised absences etc. Trying to be a professional I’m acknowledging I haven’t the foggiest idea where to start. So, all suggestions and physical examples to show me how its' done would be appreciated. Badger

Thanks firestar, I've read a little on this Bradford scale which left me confused over the scoring. Badger

Susssed it Paul, I thought from from the initial equation I saw it was sickness times two and couldn't see where the x2 was being used, but have now realised it is sickness squared which helps clear my confusion. Now to try and produce a working example. Badger

I agree with Ray

Whilst away from the forum I've found with the help of another member a site plus HSE research report 310 suggestions of free down loadable sites and absence catogories. Will report back once I've dug around them to see if they are any good. Of course all commentry will be totally non biased and for the information of the forum to use as they see fit ... thought to get that in just in case I forget next time. Thanks for everyone's thoughts on the subject. Badger

Ray has identified a quite important issue about the boundary between 'HR' and OSH. The boudary is one of professional training, accreditationi and affiliation: HR practitioners can trace their national professional society back to 1913 while OSH practitioners are more 'recent' as an occupational group since the IOSH came alive in 1945. Last year, the CIPD introduced a toral redesign of its entry path to full membership and probably now has the most cuttingedge process of accreditation of all professions introduced in the last century. At the same time, there is no legal boundary around work in the area of HR, not even the loosely defined concept of 'competent person'. While it may be unconventional for an OSH practitioner to montior absenteeism, the relevant legal tripwire simply concerns his or her 'competence'. In the light of Ray's observations, arguably appropriate professional competence about absence monitoring involves more than downloading tools from websites because associated management actions may have far-reaching implications associated with employees' contracts, including matters about discipline, grievance and reward and quite possibly intricaies about different kinds of discriminatio. Yet an adequate level of competence may be developed by reading relevant chapters in one of the better texts on employment law which provide not simply details of relevant statutes but also comments on relevant case law associated with judicial decisions; they're very well-written and supported by up-to-date material on the websites of publlishers.

With regards to On Safe Lines SMART absenteeism programme; One of the unique features of SMART is that although it is fundamentally a database application it will look and feel like a spreadsheet application to many users. Each matrix making use of columns and rows for user data inputting. Key Features of SMART integrated into this FREE programme include; * Easy to set up, maintain an input data. * Comprehensive records of employee sickness records, both current and historical * Intelligent trend analysis on employee sickness, including; - 10 or more days of sickness in 52 weeks - 2 or more occurrences off sickness in the last 13 weeks - 2 or more occurrences off sickness in any 13-week period in the last 52 weeks - 5 or more separate sickness in a 52 week period - 5 or more continuous days off with sickness in a 52 week period - Comprehensive reports that cover all aspects of employees sickness and sickness trends. - Comprehensive statistics on sickness figures - Historical sickness records are maintained for the employees working career with your company. - Monitor employees on sickness disciplinary, from first warning to dismissal SMART also has a downloadable populated demo to show new companies just what the programme is capable of doing for them. Why would you pay when this programme is freeware?