Agenda item

Julie Foy, Director of Human Resources was present and outlined the report

During consideration of the report the following main points were made –

·         Noted the corporate target for sickness absence for this period is 7.5 days per employee. The six month report has been affected by COVID, but despite this the average number of days taken as sickness absence for this 6 month period per employee is 3.53 days, 7.06 annualised. If COVID is taken out this reduces to 3.16 days, 6.32 annualised. Although the trend is down long term sickness remains an area of concern, along with an ageing workforce, in slowing the rate of improvement

·         Noted differences in departmental sickness levels

·         In response to a question it was stated that there were gender variances for mental health absence e.g. a higher level of anxiety amongst the female workforce and a higher prevalence for depression amongst the male workforce. More work was being undertaken on long term absence by gender. Sickness is often connected with the work that staff are undertaking and more back, neck and musco-skeletal injuries are prevalent amongst those who work in more manual jobs on the frontline where there is a higher number of older and male workers

·         In response to a question on patterns,  it was stated that more work would be done by the Employee Relations team to look at patterns e.g. staff taking Fridays and Mondays off, or whether there was an even spread. In addition it would be more helpful if future reports included case studies of how long term sickness is dealt with

·         Noted that Occupational Health provided expertise and professional advice in assisting the Council in dealing with sickness

·         A Member expressed the view that an Appendix should be provided to the report in future in order to ‘drill down’ into some of the data, and that this should include grades of staff and ethnic breakdown of sickness levels

·         The view was expressed that staff should be congratulated at the low levels of sickness during the pandemic, given the unprecedented nature of the pandemic, and the adjustments that staff had hard to make

·         In response to a question as to the effects of longer term COVID on staff it was stated that discussions were taking place with the Director of Public Health in relation to this as more clinical understanding emerges, as symptoms vary, however present cases were limited. One common symptom is fatigue, but it does not always present in absence. There is an issue of staff productivity due to the effects of long COVID, rather than long term sickness necessarily at this stage

·         The view was expressed that there had been a shift to hybrid working during the pandemic and that going forward this method of working should be adopted, where appropriate, as this had proved effective

·         In addition whilst some absence figures were very good, emphasis should be placed on long term sickness in a sympathetic manner given that this inflates the sickness figures considerably

·         Reference was made to the employee assistance programme and that this should be advertised to staff more widely as staff may not be aware of this or reluctant to access it

RESOLVED:

That future reports contain details as to the breakdown of sickness by grade and ethnicity and that the next report include case studies of how long term sickness cases were being dealt with

The Chair thanked Julie Foy for attending