Personnel Today
  • Home
    • All PT content
  • Email sign-up
  • Topics
    • HR Practice
    • Employee relations
    • Learning & training
    • Pay & benefits
    • Wellbeing
    • Recruitment & retention
    • HR strategy
    • HR Tech
    • The HR profession
    • Global
    • All HR topics
  • Legal
    • Case law
    • Commentary
    • Flexible working
    • Legal timetable
    • Maternity & paternity
    • Shared parental leave
    • Redundancy
    • TUPE
    • Disciplinary and grievances
    • Employer’s guides
  • AWARDS
    • Personnel Today Awards
    • The RAD Awards
  • Jobs
    • Find a job
    • Jobs by email
    • Careers advice
    • Post a job
  • Brightmine
    • Learn more
    • Products
    • Free trial
    • Request a quote
  • Webinars
  • Advertise
  • OHW+

Personnel Today

Register
Log in
Personnel Today
  • Home
    • All PT content
  • Email sign-up
  • Topics
    • HR Practice
    • Employee relations
    • Learning & training
    • Pay & benefits
    • Wellbeing
    • Recruitment & retention
    • HR strategy
    • HR Tech
    • The HR profession
    • Global
    • All HR topics
  • Legal
    • Case law
    • Commentary
    • Flexible working
    • Legal timetable
    • Maternity & paternity
    • Shared parental leave
    • Redundancy
    • TUPE
    • Disciplinary and grievances
    • Employer’s guides
  • AWARDS
    • Personnel Today Awards
    • The RAD Awards
  • Jobs
    • Find a job
    • Jobs by email
    • Careers advice
    • Post a job
  • Brightmine
    • Learn more
    • Products
    • Free trial
    • Request a quote
  • Webinars
  • Advertise
  • OHW+

HR practiceSickness absence

Tightening sickness absence policies is not necessarily the answer

by Personnel Today 4 Apr 2006
by Personnel Today 4 Apr 2006

Performance indicators, productivity and lost working time… the lot of an HR director is not always a happy one. Especially when you are often held accountable for an issue that should, at least, be collectively owned by the senior management team – you guessed it, sickness absence.

Reading the ongoing publicity relating to absence levels, particularly within the public sector, it made me think that perhaps some of my professional colleagues have completely lost the plot, or at least the point.

When HR professionals only talk about trigger points, absence hotlines and their increasingly draconian absence measures – usually with the glazed look of a convert –

I really start to worry. Systems-based approaches to managing absence are all well and good, up to a point. But you run the risk of creating organisational problems in the longer term if you don’t first think about the bigger picture, and understand why people don’t come to work in the first place.

So, in dispelling some of the myths related to absence, let’s start with a few home truths. Absence from work is not always a problem; it can be caused by genuine illness, and each organisation will always have its absence threshold.

My organisation generally has fewer than seven days’ absence per year, with a workforce in excess of 14,500 people. Yes, we do the usual round of return-to-work interviews, occupational health support, trigger points and absence management training for line managers – all of which make a difference. However, continually tightening the screws on these sorts of processes misses the point. If you operate within an organisation where absence is taboo and HR acts as the sickness inquisition, then can you really expect to have a positive culture that fosters wellbeing and encourages people to come to work?

Stop to think about the underlying causes, and consider whether or not your organisation is simply reflecting the local population where you work. Is it an area of high unemployment, high incapacity benefit uptake and a low skills base? If this is your stock pool of talent, then shouldn’t you try to change the water in your pool so that you’re not simply recruiting more absence problems?

Managing absence is really part of the wider proposition about how your organisation manages the psychological contract with your employees. Not being a great theorist or academic, the psychological contract is a fairly simple proposition for me. If you recruit people well, give them a safe and supportive working environment, where performance is actively managed and they expect this from day one, then do you really need to get into this whole vicious circle of tightening absence processes and systems until the whole issue is blown out of proportion and people start to switch off?

Staff wellbeing is about providing an environment that is conducive to people wanting to come to work and doing a good job. It is about having managers who manage well, and an organisational culture that is mature enough to recognise that a degree of absence is a natural side-effect of employing real people. It is also about creating greater access to flexible working, and a broad range of benefits that motivate and encourage individuals.

A truly successful approach to absence management is a holistic one that doesn’t just do the hard stuff, but also thinks about the total package that you offer as an employer – friendly colleagues, access to learning opportunities, work-life balance, fair pay and rewards and so on.

So maybe next time you feel overwhelmed by the tide of statements about needing to slash public sector absence rates from Mr CBI or Ms Government Policy guru, you should trying looking at this in totality, rather than in glorious isolation. The choice is for you and your organisation to make. Do you want to talk about ‘in health and in sickness’ or ‘in sickness and in health’?

Sign up to our weekly round-up of HR news and guidance

Receive the Personnel Today Direct e-newsletter every Wednesday

OptOut
This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

I know which one I would put first.

By Stephen Moir, director of HR, Cambridgeshire County Council


Personnel Today

Personnel Today articles are written by an expert team of award-winning journalists who have been covering HR and L&D for many years. Some of our content is attributed to "Personnel Today" for a number of reasons, including: when numerous authors are associated with writing or editing a piece; or when the author is unknown (particularly for older articles).

previous post
Conservatives plead for reprieve for Home Computing Initiative
next post
Entrepreneurs in China let down easy

You may also like

Top 10 HR questions June 2025: Redundancy consultation

2 Jul 2025

Welfare cuts would ‘undermine workforce inclusion and business...

27 Jun 2025

With HR absence rising, is your people team...

24 Jun 2025

Seven ways to prepare now for the Employment...

20 Jun 2025

Sickness absence falls to almost pre-pandemic rate

4 Jun 2025

Top 10 HR questions May 2025: Failure to...

2 Jun 2025

Charlie Mayfield: HR needs more proactive approach to...

29 May 2025

Number of Neet women rises but figures fall...

23 May 2025

Union rep teacher awarded £370k for unfair dismissal

15 May 2025

Period pain and absence harm women’s pay and...

13 May 2025

  • Empowering working parents and productivity during the summer holidays SPONSORED | Businesses play a...Read more
  • AI is here. Your workforce should be ready. SPONSORED | From content creation...Read more

Personnel Today Jobs
 

Search Jobs

PERSONNEL TODAY

About us
Contact us
Browse all HR topics
Email newsletters
Content feeds
Cookies policy
Privacy policy
Terms and conditions

JOBS

Personnel Today Jobs
Post a job
Why advertise with us?

EVENTS & PRODUCTS

The Personnel Today Awards
The RAD Awards
Employee Benefits
Forum for Expatriate Management
OHW+
Whatmedia

ADVERTISING & PR

Advertising opportunities
Features list 2025

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • Linkedin


© 2011 - 2025 DVV Media International Ltd

Personnel Today
  • Home
    • All PT content
  • Email sign-up
  • Topics
    • HR Practice
    • Employee relations
    • Learning & training
    • Pay & benefits
    • Wellbeing
    • Recruitment & retention
    • HR strategy
    • HR Tech
    • The HR profession
    • Global
    • All HR topics
  • Legal
    • Case law
    • Commentary
    • Flexible working
    • Legal timetable
    • Maternity & paternity
    • Shared parental leave
    • Redundancy
    • TUPE
    • Disciplinary and grievances
    • Employer’s guides
  • AWARDS
    • Personnel Today Awards
    • The RAD Awards
  • Jobs
    • Find a job
    • Jobs by email
    • Careers advice
    • Post a job
  • Brightmine
    • Learn more
    • Products
    • Free trial
    • Request a quote
  • Webinars
  • Advertise
  • OHW+