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Health and attendance, guide for negotiators

There have been some early successes in relation to the discussions between PCS and both the Cabinet Office and Health and Safety Executive, of which the most significant was the then chancellor, Gordon Brown, dropping his planned onslaught on paid sick leave.

The main challenge now is translating this success into reality on the ground, especially as some departments appear to be determined to attack the sick leave of new entrants and use sickness absence monitoring and procedures to undermine staff health and morale.

Government is not following its own policies

PCS is concerned that the positive approach that has been outlined in the government’s health, work and well-being strategy, the evidence of the real benefits of good health and well-being management and the excellent good practice guidance that already exists are not being used by government organisations.

In some cases, government policies and procedures go completely against widely accepted evidence and good practice.

Our aim is therefore to work at all levels to move management away from short-term, target-driven approaches to health and attendance management towards a more positive agenda that actively promotes the health and well-being of our members.

Conference motion on wellbeing at work

Motion A13 at the 2006 PCS annual delegate conference addressed the issues around wellbeing at work, and forms the basis for PCS policy. The full text of the motion reads:

"This annual delegate conference notes with concern the increasingly punitive approach to sick leave which has recently been taken across a number of departments of the civil service. We note with particular dismay that the way in which sick absence is being treated severely disadvantages members who suffer from genuine medical problems, including on some occasions those who are legally classified as disabled.

"This conference also notes that this extremely undesirable approach taken towards sick leave, which can sometimes lead to the dismissal of productive workers is directly contradictory to the government’s current stated policy of helping individuals currently in receipt of incapacity benefit back to work, and as such smacks of hypocrisy.

"We believe that the defence of those hard working civil servants who whilst unfortunately suffering from a degree of ill health yet who are still entirely healthy enough to work is of paramount importance and therefore we instruct the NEC to as a matter of urgency set up a national strategy to deal with this issue, with a view to collecting and collating and evidence on the punitive use of sick leave procedures, and facilitating local and national campaigns on this matter and providing advice and support to local reps dealing with individual cases connected to the questionable use of sick absence management procedures."

Objectives for negotiators

Negotiators and representatives should try to achieve the following broad objectives in relation to health and attendance management:

  • Good practice in managing health and attendance means
  • Addressing the underlying causes of absence instead of setting arbitrary targets and using punitive measures
  • Improving line manager training
  • Encouraging flexibility
  • Reducing pressures on staff
  • Improving health and safety management and procedures
  • Not using the attendance procedures to cut costs or for reduce staff numbers
  • Not introducing policies just to deflect media criticism

Good practice will lead to the creation of a healthy workplace with increased productivity and efficiency as a result of:

  • Fairer policies including making necessary adjustments for staff who need them
  • Implementing good policies that already exist
  • Openness and transparency
  • Better work environment
  • Better job satisfaction
  • Improved rehabilitation options
  • Improved morale
  • Good preventive measures to reduce sick leave
  • Less stress and anxiety
  • Staff feeling valued by the employer

The PCS position

The PCS position, which takes account of the Spending Review statement on long-term sickness, argues that there should be no detrimental changes to contractual sick pay and statutory leave entitlements and sets out the following areas where progress could be made on promoting the health of the workforce.

This means:

1. Supporting physical and mental health and well-being before the onset of sickness (through risk assessment procedures, creating a good working environment, managing workloads and health advice).

2. Making positive use of the findings of the Whitehall II study to understand the causes of work-related ill-health and to find solutions.

3. Improving the working environment by reducing job insecurity, consistently long hours and lack of control over workloads.

4. Widening access to alternative working patterns and non-discriminatory work-life balance options to support employees’ caring responsibilities.

5. Ensuring that all members of staff know about the options for all types of leave and working patterns that are available and are encouraged to use them without fear of detriment to their careers.

6. Managing workloads within the statutory and contractual limits on working hours.

7. Developing a central framework of fair policies and procedures based on respect for colleagues and ensuring that the framework is applied across the civil service.

8. Developing training for managers that goes beyond applying procedures to create understanding of how workers experiencing health problems can be supported and encouraged to continue working.

9. Ensuring that policies and procedures are clear, well understood and consistently applied and that managers and staff are supported when they need to use them.

10. Making available trusted independent and confidential occupational health services that the employee may access voluntarily as well as by referral from management.

11. Giving sensitive support to individual employees to enable them to recover quickly and return to work, including offering reasonable adjustments to the job or workplace or alternative work if appropriate.

12. Finding individually appropriate solutions for employees who are unable to return to work.

How to use this guidance

This guidance is designed to help negotiators, particularly at group level, to engage with members and management to improve policies and procedures. It can be used to:

  • review current agreements, policies and procedures
  • identify issues that need to be tackled and negotiate around them
  • engage members in a discussion in their area about their ideas and needs
  • mount a campaign in conjunction with the PCS campaigns unit
  • review and issue updated guidance to reps on taking forward personal cases related to the topics covered in the campaign.

CCSU strategy

The PCS objectives are further supported by a strategy adopted by the Council of Civil Service Unions (CCSU) at a meeting of its sub-group in January 2006, of which the key elements are:

1. Reiterating support for positive action, based on previous agreements reached under Revitalising Health and Safety and Working Well Together.

2. Keep pursuing the message “Follow your own good practice guidance” as contained in Well-being at Work, the Task Force report, Whitehall ll, Revitalising Health and Safety and Working Well Together

3. Demanding action from employers to work through a staged process where the following priorities should be put in place:

  • effective line management (including full training for managers)
  • providing information and support for workers and managers
  • effective recruitment and redeployment practices
  • giving employees control over their work
  • managing organisational change well
  • providing job security
  • zero tolerance campaigns against violence and bullying
  • encouragement of healthy lifestyles and work life balance

Then, if absence problems persist, the unions will engage on the issues of tackling “absence culture” and the question of incentives and rewards.

4. Tackling the issues of disability adjustments and health and safety assessments where management action/inaction is causing or prolonging absences caused by sickness or disability

5. Suggesting that employers review their sickness “hotspots” and use this mechanism to select potential pilot projects. CS Sickness Absence statistics can be used to identify particular areas or causes of concern. Comparative pilots could help identify common factors on causes and solutions. Previous work was done on regional, gender and location factors – is data still being collected in this way?

6. The FDA view is that managers do actually want to carry out attendance management well. In some instances where it has been handled badly, an “attendance culture” has been created, which can cause as many problems as an “absence culture”.

The FDA particularly supports the idea of having mandatory training along the same lines as that done for recruitment processes and thinks that this approach could become even more important if we move towards a shared service environment for HR support

7. An underlying point for the Public Sector Forum work is that the whole concept should be something that can command the willing support of the trade union members of that body. There should be no need to include anything that requires changes to contractual terms or conditions of service agreements. Unions would oppose attacks on sick leave/sick pay entitlements, individual rewards or incentives as there is no evidence that this makes any difference to absence rates; if employers can’t show us the evidence that they work, we won’t support such measures.

Keep us informed

It is important that branches and bargaining units share their departmental attendance policies and any progress made with management with PCS. Please pass information to Pam Cole on 020 7801 2639 or email pamela.cole@pcs.org.uk

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