The
Royal Mail is offering its staff the chance to win cars and holiday vouchers in
a scheme designed to cut high rates of absenteeism.
Workers
who do not take a single day off sick between now and January 31 2005 will be
entered into a prize draw and could win one of 34 Ford Focus cars or holiday
vouchers worth £2,000.
A
spokesman admitted that the Royal Mail has high rates of absenteeism and said
it hoped the incentives will tackle a problem which costs the company several
million pounds a year.
At
any one time, 10,000 staff – or 6.5 per cent of a total workforce of 170,000 –
are absent and the average Royal Mail worker is off sick for 12 days every
year, compared with a national average of seven days off.
"We’re
saying we have got a problem with absenteeism, we want to tackle it and the way
we’re trying is with a carrot approach," a spokesman said.
The
company is also setting up a new scheme of standards for dealing with
absenteeism in collaboration with the unions.
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