War Against the ‘War on Sickies’ - - Sickness Absence Management

1. Department of Human Resource Management University of Strathclyde War Against the ‘War on Sickies’ - - Sickness Absence Management Professor Phil Taylor 25 February 2016 PCS MoD AGM

3. 1) The ‘so-called’ problem • Imposing time discipline is as old as the factory system itself • Workers’ broadly accept the duty to work and punctuality has to be continually remade • Employers obsessed with overcoming the perceived tendency for workers taking ‘non-genuine’, ‘voluntary’, ‘illegitimate’, ‘unauthorised’ absences • ‘Moral panics’ over absenteeism e.g. 2nd World War

4. Public discourse of ‘sick note Britain’, ‘swinging the lead’ or ‘duvet days’ • Much publicised reports of cost of absence to the UK economy e.g. CBI - £20bn 2007; £14bn 2014 • Contempt directed at public sector workers, whose absence levels are compared unfavourably • e.g. Glasgow City Council’s ‘war on sickies’ • ‘Efficiency savings’ – a hot 2010 General Election issue and now a post-2015 Election obsession

5. 2) Analysing the Statistics • Should not uncritically accept the headline figures • CIPD, CBI, Labour Force Survey vary in target population, respondent type, demography, timing • Some figures derived from small samples • Costs to industry are aggregate estimates • Reports reveal change • e.g. CBI : 1993 – 7.2 days per employee • 2013 – 4.4 days per employee (ONS figures) • Long-term sickness remains unchanged at 40% of ‘lost’ working time

6. Analysis challenges rhetoric of sick-note Britain • e.g. CBI only 12% of absence ‘non-genuine’ • ‘Sickies’ linked to long weekends and sporting events is mythical (Barham and Begum, 2005) • Sickness absence evenly spread through week • CIPD’s annual survey since 2000 showed first a ‘yo-yo’ trend then a steady decline • LFS – ONS shows that sickness absence rates have decreased between 2001 and 2013 • UK absence in line with other countries

8. CBI (2014) 4.9 days public, 6.9 days private sector • LFS shows 2.8% public, 1.8% private • HSE found that when adjustments made for age, gender, org. size the differences were very modest • Also, presenteeismmore prevalent amongst public sector workers, who are more likely to work when ill • Presenteeism– Work Foundation report (2010) • Preoccupation with business costs also open to critique - far greater costs to society • Short-term absence may indeed be a necessary coping mechanism (see Kivimaki, 2003)

9. 3) Sickness Absence Management – Change in Policy and Practice • Key regulatory change was Statutory Sick Pay Act (1994) shifting burden from state to employer • Assuming costs led to close management control • Two main changes:- 1) Computerised records monitoring enabled a pseudo-scientificbasis for analysis and action 2) Previous informal practices formalised into new policies and tightly prescribed procedures • From mid-1990s scores and trigger points • Bradford Factor – penalising short-term absence – criticised for denying legitimacy of any s-t absence

10. Making sick workers fearful of disciplinary action causes stress and premature RTW • Raft of new procedures – home visits, RWIs, • RWIs conflate caring intentions with discipline • Emphasis on getting people back to work rather than – if occupationally related – the employment reasons why people got sick in the first place • Effectiveness of RWIs questionable –difference between orgs that do and don’t have them? • Presenteeism encouraged by pressure to attend may cause greater productivity losses than absenteeism

11. Relating sickness absence to disciplinary action may contradict parallel approaches focusing on rehabilitation, RTW, job security • No apparent welfarist narrative at all in MoD • Employers required to conform to certain legal protections: • - unfair dismissal on the grounds of capability • - Disability Discrimination Act – now Equality Act • - duty to make reasonable adjustments to sick pay schemes that place disabled persons at a disadvantage

12. 4) Employee Experiences • Have you ever come to work when ill? ‘Often’ • 1995 – Ministry 7.7% • 1995 – FinCo 6.3% • 1996 - Gov1 7.6% • 1996 – Gov2 6.7% • 1996 – Gov3 9.8% • 2001-2 – Util 19.1% • 2005 – Emerg 18% • 2009 – Gov4 21% • 2013 – FinCo 23%

13. Reasons for coming to Work When Ill Utilities, Emergency Services, Govt. Agency Not ill enough to warrant staying off 54 67 47 Backlogs, pressures of work 41 64 39 Management/supervisor pressure 30 33 37 Sickness absence policy 73 64 70 Fear of disciplinary action 33 34 50 • MoD policy – ‘work focused approach’ – come to work when ill • Many workers reporting a vicious circle

14. ‘I used to enjoy my job, but it has gone progressively downhill. I quite often feel physically sick about going to work, I’m constantly low or depressed and look for reasons to not attend work although I do actually go in...Management do not care and are not interested in anything the staff tell them and turn a blind eye thinking if the problem is ignored long enough it will go away (staffing situation is a classic example). Even though staff go off sick with work-related stress, their answer is to introduce new sickness policy and staff feel even worse. Once upon a time I would have considered my job as a good career prospect. I am now concerned for my health and well-being and consequently looking for another job’. (Female , clerical worker, aged 39)

15. The Vicious Circle

16. 5) The Impact of Recession and Austerity • Recession accelerated harsh punitive tendencies • ‘I had my first cancer’ • SAPs becoming more punitive and workers being progressed faster through stages • Numerous cases of disciplinaries & ‘managed exit’ • New Performance Management (Taylor, 2013) • Employees’ sickness absence used as a metric in appraisals, promotion, selection for redundancy • Problem is short-termism and counterproductive • Compounds illness and damages productivity

17. 6) Conclusions and WITBD? • Strict (or robust) absence control is now embedded in organisations as an integral element of cost reduction strategies • Are all absences now illegitimate? • Do policies and practices have to be punitive? • Is it possible to reconcile cost cutting with human and welfarist objectives? • The only good practice is when TUs are involved, defending members, negotiating policy • The dominant organisational issue is not absenteeism but presenteeism

18. Harsh SAPs are short-termist and counterproductive • Turning complaints into serious medical conditions • Excessive and inappropriate use of managerial time • Substance often barbaric – ‘support employee to continue to work when they experience ill-health’ • Part-day absence ‘a concession that may be withdrawn if abused’ • Culture of attendance or of compulsory presenteeism? • The ‘proactivity’ of management needs to be matched by proactivity of unions and reps • Gender dimension, equality and disability issues • Collectivise individual cases

19. Appeal, appeal, appeal • Raise with union • Keep records – always • Be aware, be union • Ask not what the union can do for me but what I can do for the union