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TUC and CBI in dogfight over ‘absence’ claims

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The Trades Union Congress (TUC) has lashed out at claims that UK workers are a nation of skivers throwing dubious ‘sickies’ to get off work, sky-high long-term absence figures are down to more stressful jobs in the public sector they say; a claim refuted by the CBI.

‘Sicknote Britain?’ maintains that while long term absence is more common amongst public sector workers this is because jobs in the sector are more stressful.

The report also says that leaving long-term absence figures aside, short-term absence compared like-for-like with private sector workers is lower. The average time lost through short term absence is 5.5 days compared to 4.9 in the public sector, they say.

Beating the cheaters has long been a problem for HR professionals. The Confederation of British Industry (CBI) put a price tag on the cost of dubious sickness of 25 million working days a year.

The CBI, however, refute claims that jobs in the public sector are more stressful then those in the private sector.

A spokesperson from the employers’ group told HRZone:

“We don’t accept that as an explanation. We can’t see any reason why you’d take out long term absence in a study of this kind. The majority of days lost to absence are of this kind. Our survey shows that the public sector has a worse record of absence for both long-term and short-term sickness.

“Clearly there are stressful jobs in the public sector but you can’t make any blanket claims against the stress levels between the two groups, private and public. We also wouldn’t accept that there is any link between stress and absence, something the unions try to trumpet every time they talk on the issue.”

The TUC report also counters critics who say stress is not a serious illness and that cutting back on Incapacity Benefits is the way to tackle absence problems.

Presenteeism is a bigger threat they say. According to their statistics, 75% of workers confessed to having struggled into work when they were actually too ill to do so.

The CBI added: “The main cause of absence is people being ill, it’s not stress. Equally it’s not skiving.”

The report suggests that bosses should look at flexible working and improving work/life balance as a means to reducing levels of sickness absence.

‘Sicknote Britain?’ also takes a pop at commentators who suggest that workers off with stress are not really that ill. They also say that despite reports to the contrary the number of Incapacity Benefit claimants is falling, not rising.

TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber said:

“Sicknote Britain is an urban myth. We take less time off than most other countries, and public sector staff are less likely to take time off for a short term illness. When employers complain of sicknote Britain, they are attacking some of Europe’s most loyal employees.

The TUC report shows that UK workers are less likely to take short-term time off sick than in any European country except Denmark. Only Austria, Germany and Ireland lose less working time due to long-term absence.

“And those who’ve been trying to make cheap political points about getting tough with the ‘work-shy spongers’ are completely missing the point. People on Incapacity Benefit (IB) have very genuine problems which make it very difficult for them to take the majority of jobs on offer.”

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2 Responses

  1. Sickness absence problems

    There is plenty of evidence that many European countries, including the UK, do have a long term problem with sickness absence. In many cases on the European continent this is often closely linked with overgenerous state welfare payments, or legal obligations to pay absent staff their full salary for a prolonged period (as in the Netherlands).

    However, where many companies principally go wrong is in:

    * Not calculating the true cost of absence, particularly repeated, short-term absence.

    * Not placing the financial burden for absence on individual departmental managers.

    * Not adopting (where possible) a paid time off approach that rewards employees with longer paid holidays if they do not take short periods of work absence during the year.

    * Not taking a proactive approach to wellness in order to reduce the incidence of absence.

    * Not permitting discretionary absence where it is humane and justified.

    * Being over-punative in the handling of legitimate absence and expecting those with serious contagious conditions to turn up for work (thus leading to widespread absence and greater costs to the company).

    The Federation of European Employers (FedEE) has just launched a model company wellness policy that will assist employers overcome many of these pitfalls. We even include a draft memo that can be used to prepare departmental heads for the launch of a new policy.

  2. It’s not so clear cut
    I don’t know about which sector has the most stressful jobs – public or priavte, and given my understanding of the nature and cause of stress, I don’t even think the question is valid, however, I can share my own recent experiences of a local government authority’s social services department.

    Staff turnover was not far off 40% leaving within 12 months. I did some in-depth research in to finding the root causes. I spent some 4 months interviewing and surveying literally hundreds of current and recently former employees.

    The two biggest contributors, about 85% in total, to staff leaving, were poor people management by line managers and a big difference between the realities of the job and the expectations of the post as adervtised.

    Coupled to the people management issues were a lack of clarity about the priorities, role, responsibilities and accountabilities required of line managers.

    A major contributor to the expectation gap was a lack in many places of a structured and well-managed induction exoerience for new starters.

    All of these are root causes that HR can be well placed to tackle, and can do so with great outcome for the organisation AND HR itself.

    I don’t think these issues are unique to this one example, or the public sector at large. What is perhaps a greater issue for the public sector is resources, or lack of – not at national level, but locally, perhaps due to a comparatively bloated bureaucracy?

    It’s difficult to motivate care workers once you have squandered their good will and when they can get better rates of pay and less stress stacking shelves at the local supermarket.

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Annie Hayes

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