Agenda item

(Director of Resources) to consider the attached report.

The Assistant Director Human Resources, Ms P Maginnis, introduced her report on the Council’s absence figures for Quarters 1 and 2 for 2017-18. She noted that the Council’s target for sickness absence under RES001 for 2017/2018 was an average of 7.25 days per employee.  The current outturn figure for the two quarters was an average of 3.39 days, which was slightly above the target of 3.22 days.

During Q1, 4.3 % of employees met the trigger levels or above, 27.9% had sickness absence but did not meet the triggers and 67.8% had no absence.  During Q2, 5.2% of employees met the trigger levels or above, 27% had sickness absence but did not meet the trigger levels and 67.8% had no absence.

There has been a slight increase in the number of long term absence from Q4 of last year to Q1 of this. However, there had been a significant rise in long term cases in Q2, the highest it has been in this 5 year period.  The rise has been mainly in mental health issues and cancer cases.  For mental health issues we have the help of an occupational health service called ‘Mindful Employer’ that can be directly contacted by staff members. Line managers have also been trained to give help and support. However, they could not really legislate for cases of cancer.

As a summary, compared to Q1 and Q2 of 2016/2017 there has been an;

• Increase in mental health reasons of 28%
• Increase of back problems of 41%
• Increase in other musculoskeletal of 22%
• Increase of incidents of cancer of 100%

Councillor Bedford asked how many staff had taken up the ‘Mindful Employer’ option. Ms Maginnis said that they did not follow it up as it was a confidential service. Councillor Bedford then asked if only the long term sick had access to this service. He was told that they were also referred to the Harlow Occupational Health service. Councillor Bedford postulated that it would be good for HR to send a letter reminding the staff that they can use the services of this organisation (Mindful Employer).

Councillor Stalker asked if these were the same people who had a reoccurrence or were they different people every time. Ms Maginnis said that they tended to be different with various reasons. Councillor Stalker said that it would be useful to look at what triggered the illnesses. Councillor Patel said it would also be useful to look at the grade of the staff.

Councillor Mitchell was concerned about staff with back problems and suggested that the Council contacted a specialist seating company. Her company had used Parker Knoll in the past and they proved to be successful. Ms Maginnis said that the Council was using that very company. They also carried out workplace assessments for affected staff and had various chairs that they could try out to help with their posture. They also had relevant training for all manual workers.

Councillor Bassett noted that the NHS were notoriously slow in dealing with mental health issues, how did the council get around this. Ms Maginnis replied that they referred staff straight to the Harlow Occupation Health Service and arranged sessions with them as soon as possible. We are proactive on this as they knew that the NHS was not as responsive as they could be.

A lot of the mental health problems could be put down to the uncertainty caused by the Transformation projects; change always caused problems.

Councillor Bedford asked if when a person came back did they come back to the same job or could they be redeployed to take them out of that stressful situation that caused the problems in the first place. Ms Maginnis confirmed that they used a phased return to work with full management support. But it also depended why the problems occurred in the first place; they took advice from the Harlow Health Service  about this.

Councillor Jennings asked how the workloads and vacancies had affected the staff. Ms Maginnis that these factors could play a role and managers had various options that they could use, such as reallocating the workloads etc.

Councillor Bedford asked what was the total number of days lost. Ms Maginnis indicated table 3 of her report noting that 20 people were off for 20 days or more off. This was out of a total of about 650 to 670 staff.

Councillor Sunger asked if these were mainly new employees or established staff. He was told that  it was spread across the board. Maybe on the next report she could include length of service. Councillor Sunger wondered if the council could reward  members of staff for not taking any sickness.  Councillor Lea said that a bank gave their staff one extra day annual leave if they did not have sickness in that year. Ms Maginnis said that this suggestion could be put forward as part of the people strategy project for them to look at. Councillor Dorrell cautioned against this as the genuinely sick could feel discriminated against and also people may opt to work from home instead of legitimately going off sick.

RESOLVED:

That the Committee noted the report on sickness absence.