[11
APR 00] COVENTRY CITY COUNCIL NEWS
Social Services Sicknote Setback
BY ANTONY HOPKER
Efforts
to reduce the number of days lost to sick leave in Coventry’s social
services are to be stepped up by managers.
A
long-running programme to tackle the high levels of sickness is being
intensified by bosses at Coventry City Council.
Targets
to reduce the number of working hours lost were not met in December
last year, and in one department – Children’s Services -
absenteeism rose to nearly 10 per cent.
Managers
hope to reduce sickness to 7.5 per cent in Social Services, 8 per cent
in Social Services Care and 5.5 per cent in Children’s Services.
But
the trend in the last month of 1999 was upwards.
A
report into the problem revealed that long-term sickness - defined as
more than 30 days’ continuous absence, cost the department more than
£500,000 in December.
This
had been cut to £430,000 by January, but still meant there were
18,000 working days lost to illness during the month.
Strategic
Director (Social Inclusion) Jonathan Smith told city councillors that
managers had made improving attendance one of their top priorities.
He
said they had started to spend time with individual members of staff
to try and find out the cause of absenteeism.
“The
management of the department are keeping this as a very high priority
– one of many different priorities we have to grapple with.”
But
he reminded councillors that some staff were genuinely ill and should
be given sympathy as they recovered.
He
added:
“There
are also officers who shouldn’t be at work but because of their
strong commitment to the job battle in to work and cope, perhaps on
occasions when they shouldn’t be there.”
Cllr
Nick Nolan (Labour, Holbrooks), chairman of the Social Affairs Policy
Co-ordinating Committee, said:
“We
intend to get to the root cause of the illness levels and deal with it
in a sensitive way for our staff.”
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