Absent trends
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Sick leave costs UK employers £11 billion a year, according to a CBI survey. An average eight days per worker or 3.5% of working time—is lost annually And 171 million working days were lost in 1993, says the survey carried out by Centre-file Percom.
This is bad news for transport and distribution, which is ranked fourth in the survey's league, just behind local and national government and the oil and mining industries, with an average 9.7 days lost per worker.
And the CBI says the .C11bn cost to industry is an underestimate because it does not take lost production and business into account.
This view is backed by TNT senior employee relations manager Bert Proctor: "It's hard to quantify the costs because you could lose a customer if the driver fails to turn up."
The survey found that much absenteeism comes from part-time workers which, although cheaper to provide cover for, can leave the company in the lurch during busy times.
Smaller companies tended to be less affected than larger companies where employees can "hide" amid the corporate anonymity. The survey found that companies with fewer than 100 employees had the lowest level of absenteeism at 2.3%, while firms employing more than 1,000 staff recorded 3.7 to 4.3%.
Under UK employment law a company may fairly dismiss an employee. The Department of Employment's Fair and Unfair Dismissal (guide PL714-Rev 2) says: "The inability of an employee to do a job, for whatever reason, is a valid reason for dismissal. However, the case of an employee who becomes physically or mentally unable to do their job because of illness ... clearly demands special treatment. 'Tribunals recognise that—especially with smaller firms—it will often not be possible for the organisation to carry the ill employee." It says the employer must discuss the position with the employee and be sure of the facts by taking medical advice, and if there is a suitable alternative position a tribunal would expect an employer to offer it.
Doctor's certificate
Employees are legally entitled to a certain amount of sick leave as long as they produce a doctor's certificate after the first week of absence. But the real problem comes with employees that take lots of separate days that do not require a doctor's certificate—known by personnel as "Long weekend Len".
The CBI survey found 97% of employers approached absence control with notification procedures, 96% used disciplinary proce dures, 89% avoided recruiting poor attenders, 84% provided line managers with statistics and 64% use return-to.work interviews.
The formal procedures for dealing with excessive absenteeism are a verbal warning and time for the employee to improve; one or two written warnings; and a final warning before dismissal. If an employee is proven not to have been ill, it is classed as gross misconduct and a dismissable offence. But Wincanton personnel director Nigel Griffin says: "You have to secure a lot of hard evidence for this." Otherwise an employer could face an industrial tribunal for unfair dismissal.
TNT's Proctor says: "A lot of big companies don't deal with absenteeism properly, and the problem is a result of bad management. They leave it until it becomes a serious problem and then get the big stick out and start firing people."
Proctor says employees often need help and that employers should consider counselling or return-to-work interviews before disciplinary procedures.
Griffin backs this view: "Good man• agernent is to nip it in the bud. If there is a problem we offer counselling and have an in-house occupational health centre that can help an employee with longterm health problems."
Many companies such as TNT and Wincanton use monitoring as a solution. Proctor also points out that if people know they are being monitored, the absences stop.
Absence records
This is backed by the CBI survey which found that computerised absence records significantly reduced absenteeism—respondents with no sickness records had a 30% higher sickness rate.
TNT uses a "100 points" system. This is calculated by taking the number of times an employee is absent, multiplying it by itself, and then multiplying it by the total number of days the employee has taken off. "If someone takes a lot of long weekends off then it soon shows up," say Proctor. "After five lots of time off the figure goes over 100:' He also believes such a system offers consistency and fairness, as "everyone is judged by the same yardstick". He also deploys the system at the nearest point of employee contact—the line manager.
"Each of our line managers uses this system because if you go too big and give the problem to the general manager, it won't get dealt with because the task is to big to manage."
Wincanton, which has 8,600 employees at several locations, uses computerised monitoring at its large bases and manual records at the smaller sites. "You need to monitor it at the grass roots," says Griffin. "In the large centres the manager needs to be on top of the trends, but at the smaller sites with 12 or so people you don't need big computerised systems" With long-term illness, most companies try to keep the employee's position open if the doctor thinks there is a strong chance of the employee returning to work, or find a suitable relocation within the company.
Above all personnel departments like to get to the root of the problem: "It can be a sign of low morale or bad management," says Griffin. So even with effective absence control procedures, the problem may not necessarily go away and may manifest itself in another form such as high turnover of staff.
Fl by Giselle Jones