5.
The 7 Most Common Mistakes in Managing Attendance.
As an Occupational Health Nurse, I see cases day in and day out in my clinics where I sit there and wonder…how did we get here? Why wasn’t some action taken BEFORE the employee was off sick or developed a condition affecting their mental health?
These are my 7 most common mistakes Organisations are making and how you can make changes in how you manage, to avoid them.
1.Oblivion.
Businesses forecast many of their key activities, but often fail to include the management of employee health and absence. Be aware of what is happening in your organisation. Who has problems with child care, elderly relatives or is going through a divorce? Which employees are attending their GPs or hospital for tests or minor treatments? How will their situation develop over the next few months? Could they be heading for an absence? I call it getting your antenna working. Learn how to just stop and notice things.
Have you got employees with existing conditions? Do you know if they are likely to be progressive? Have you thought what you would do if their job role needed to change in the future to accommodate their varying or advancing symptoms?
Being aware of these early warning signals and making sure you have steps in place to manage these at an early stage will save you a lot of pain later on. Ask employees to give a quick update on work/life balance as an Agenda item at management meetings so that you can begin to get to know the non-work side of your team.
2.Relying on Telepathy.
Speak to your employees. Spending a few minutes just talking generally about something non work related, will often give you clues about what may be causing concern at that time.
Consider how the employee’s situation or health condition may develop at an early stage and consider what options may be available to support them to stay in work. Discuss with Senior Managers what flexibility may be possible if the employee’s circumstances do become more difficult. If you are paying staff to be off sick, then think about home working or altered hours/workload to keep them in work in some capacity.
Speak with the employee regularly and offer support. If the employee feels support is available, they are less likely to see absence as their only option. Talk about various scenarios with the management team and develop a plan which both sides see as achievable. Use case studies to inform all managers how to deal with the most common ill health situations and evaluate how successful these interventions were in minimising absence. The aim is to keep employees at work in some capacity rather than being on sick leave.
3. Not Working Out Reasonable Adjustments.
The Equality Act 2010 requires reasonable adjustments to be implemented within an organisation for employees with medical conditions or disabilities which have a substantive effect on their day to day activities. Use an Occupational Health clinician to advise you if a condition may or may not be likely to fall under the disability provision of the Act. Remember though, ultimately this is a legal and not a medical opinion. You can’t go wrong though if you try and look at what reasonably you can do for everyone whether they are covered by the Act or not.
Often employers wait for someone outside the business to tell them what adjustments are needed. But you can start to do this yourself within your business. It is part of a management business contingency approach. Look at what generic changes are operationally possible in your organisation should an employee become unable to carry out some or all of their role. You can do this! You know how flexible operationally you can be. You don’t have to wait for a GP or Occupational Health to start the process. A lot of reasonable adjustments can be agreed between employee and Manager. They are often common sense approaches.
Look at each job role and the physical elements of it generally and consider how it might be done differently if an employee has physical challenges or injuries. Occupational Health advice will be useful for more complex scenarios, but if you take initial steps, you will not be paying for someone to tell you what you already knew. The more flexible you can be and therefore the more reasonable adjustments you identify, the greater the chance of being able to bring an employee back to work at an early stage or stop them having to have absence in the first place.
Be flexible! Just because a role has always been done in a particular way doesn’t mean it can’t be delivered in a different, but equally effective way. Be creative! Work out generic reasonable adjustments across the organisation before employee capability problems occurs. If you are paying staff anyway when they are off, you should be looking at what they can do short term in the business whilst they are returning to full fitness.
It should form a part of your business contingency planning….does it?
4. Not Working With Occupational Health.
Are you making assumptions about work capability yourself by reviewing medical information? Are you relying on HR or the GP? Do you ask an electrician to do your plumbing?
Utilise Occupational Health advice to advise you what an employee can do at work in respect of their individual health conditions. Occupational Health is the area of medicine concerned with the diseases of occupation and work capability. The Occupational Health Adviser will get to know you and your workplace and is competent and experienced in advising on fitness for work issues.
Writing for a GP report will only give you information on the medical aspects of a condition, it will not provide you with any specific work related capability advice. You cannot know how to interpret any medical advice…you are not medically trained. As someone said ‘remember Google is no substitute for my degree’ If you do write for a GP report, it will be costly and take ages to arrive. This will stall any management process you are trying to progress. Using the HR/GP approach may put you at risk of being non compliant with Data Protection legislation unless you request specific consent from an employee.
With the introduction of the new Fit for Work service, GP’s involvement with the long term sick is due to decease as they are recommended to refer the employee to occupational health after 28 days absence.
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/362480/fit-for-work.pdf
5. Out of Date Attendance Polices.
Do your policies and procedures fully reflect what you want to happen in all types of sickness absence cases? When were they last updated? Work through the most common scenarios of sickness absence and test them against your policies. Do your Managers follow the policies? Ensure policies and procedures focus on preventing employee absence as well as managing it when it occurs. Have you got an occupational health policy in place? Have you looked at a Health and Wellbeing Strategy to focus on the most common reasons for absence within your organisation? Does your policy cover disability related absences under the Equality Act?
Often the first trigger for looking at an absence is far too late to really do anything about it. Policies which say refer to OH after a 28 day absence are completely missing the point. Any absence which is likely to last more than 28 days should be referred to OH in week one. Why would you wait 28 days to address an issue? This wouldn’t happen in any other area of business. By getting in early you may even be able to avoid the absence actually reaching the 28 day point. This is especially true in cases of perceived workplace stress. Early intervention is key. What is the point of letting the employee sustain a period of 28 days of stress before anyone speaks to them? Is it any wonder at that point that communication is difficult with the employee and the absence usually becomes lengthy?
Look at absence trends and consider implementing health promotion programmes to improve employee health awareness and reduce absence in areas such as mental health. Don’t sit back and say ‘I wonder how many mental health absences we will next year? Be proactive!
Include absence management targets and objectives in managers’ objectives and train appropriately. Make sure your policies encourage attendance at work and don’t penalise employees for wanting to return in some capacity at an early stage. If you are paying them to be off, you may as well pay them to come in and make some contribution to the business.
6. Not Doing Return to Work Interviews
The return to work interview is the ‘missing link’ in reducing sickness absence levels at work. If it is done at all it’s usually done in a ‘going through the motions’ kind of way and rarely leads to a constructive or meaningful outcome for either party.
In the case of short term absence in particular, it should provide an opportunity to identify the development of ill health or other issues which may affect attendance in the future. The return to work interview can, if done well, bring a number of benefits.
These are the areas to focus on:-
- Plan the conversation.
- Identify work related concerns.
- Review your attendance policies and procedures.
- Document what is discussed.
- Keep written records.
Always make sure you refer to Occupational Health to exclude or confirm a health issue before you start down the disciplinary route. There is nothing worse than being on the point of dismissing an employee and then finding out that they have a health issue which is disability related and falls under the provision of the Equality Act.
7. Having a Budget for Sickness Not Health.
Has your organisation got a budget to pay for the effects of sickness absence but nothing in the budget to prevent it? How much is sickness absence costing you? Bringing in temporary staff is expensive when key employees go sick, but many absences can be avoided or minimised if just a few simple steps are put in place.
Paying for employees to have a basic 3 yearly lifestyle check on site with an Occupational Health Adviser will identify those who have high blood pressure and high cholesterol. The costs of this are very reasonable and even doing this for the over 50s is a valuable exercise.
Other health promotion initiatives can be planned for very little cost. Many of the charities will come on site for the day for the cost of a donation. This raising awareness of conditions, can be valuable in alerting employees to certain symptoms.
The HSE management standards for stress in the workplace are another useful free tool available on the HSE website.
Evaluating your absence trends with an Occupational Health Adviser, can assist you to identify where exactly you should be spending your money. There is no point in paying for gym membership for everyone if stress is the biggest cause of absence. Invest instead in some management training so that Managers understand how to undertake a simple stress risk assessment.
In the case of short term absence in particular, it should provide an opportunity to identify the development of ill health or other issues which may affect attendance in the future. The return to work interview can, if done well, bring a number of benefits.
These are the areas to focus on:-
- Plan the conversation.
- Identify work related concerns.
- Review your attendance policies and procedures.
- Document what is discussed.
- Keep written records.
Always make sure you refer to Occupational Health to exclude or confirm a health issue before you start down the disciplinary route. There is nothing worse than being on the point of dismissing an employee and then finding out that they have a health issue which is disability related and falls under the provision of the Equality Act