Public and Commercial Services Union

PCS believes that there should be no detrimental changes to contractual sick pay and statutory leave entitlements but that progress could be made on promoting the health of the workforce in the following ways:

• 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).
• Making positive use of the findings of the Whitehall II study to understand the causes of work-related ill-health and to find solutions.
• Improving the working environment by reducing job insecurity, consistently long hours and lack of control over workloads.
• Widening access to alternative working patterns and non-discriminatory work-life balance options to support employees’ caring responsibilities.
• 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.
• Managing workloads within the statutory and contractual limits on working hours.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• Making available trusted independent and confidential occupational health services that the employee may access voluntarily as well as by referral from management.
• 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.
• Finding individually appropriate solutions for employees who are unable to return to work.