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Sickness absenceHR practiceLetters

Timely intervention keeps staff healthy

by Personnel Today 28 Jun 2005
by Personnel Today 28 Jun 2005

With reference to your news story ‘Subjective complaints are the biggest cause of sickness absence’ (PersonnelToday.com, 10 June), by concentrating on absentee figures, you only see the tip of the iceberg.

A good employer will seek out factors that might cause problems and deal with them before they do. For instance, as a proportion of the workforce in offices, very few are absent for the reasons Christine Owen from Mercer gives (stress and musculoskeletal problems, such as back pain) but the majority of people are uncomfortable. What is the cost in inefficiency of this discomfort? Is that cost less than the price of the effort needed to reduce or eliminate it?

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Prevention pays. As Owen says, good managerial and clinical intervention is the key. But don’t wait until people complain.

Hugh Babington Smith
Managing director
Etcom People Engineers

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).

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Personnel Today
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