Fife Council’s approach to attendance management has been scrutinised by the Environment, Finance and Corporate Services Scrutiny Committee.

Chair of the scrutiny committee Cllr Dave Dempsey said: “Lost working days through absence is a serious matter for the Council.  It not only costs a lot of money but also impacts on service delivery.

“Although there have been year on year improvements in attendance as a result of more pro-active management, Fife is still above the Scottish average.  All managers are responsible for ensuring they deal sensitively and promptly with staff absence to maximise attendance and allow services to continue to run smoothly and efficiently.”

At the Council budget meeting of 8 February councillors backed the proposed savings on sick pay - £1m each year.  These savings will bring absence levels in Fife Council in line with the Scottish Councils average of 9.3 days per full-time employee.

The report to scrutiny committee showed that 50% of all working days lost are due to either stress or musculo-skeletal conditions eg strains and sprains.  As part of its pro-active approach to absence management the Council has a range of early intervention support services available to help minimise working days lost  - physiotherapy, counselling, health and wellbeing information sessions, professional HR support, work-life balance hr policies and specialist occupational health referrals.  Managers are asked to refer  employees as early as possible to these services or employees can request a referral themselves.

Having looked at other council’s performance, Fife Council is going to follow the example set by others and establish a specialist hr team to specifically support managers implement more consistently and rigorously the attendance management policy.  As part of the budget agreed in February councilors agreed to invest £175,000 in this initiative.

“We’ve asked for an update report to come back to committee before the start of the summer,” said Cllr Dempsey.  “This will allow us to look in more detail at the impact this investment is having on absence levels and the Council’s performance.”