Council of Civil Service Unions Strategy on health and attendance
PCS objectives are reflected in the strategy adopted by the Council of Civil Service Unions (CCSU), 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. Civil Service 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 – are 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. The whole concept should be something that can command the willing support of the trade unions. 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.
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