An Absence of Ideas (continued)

Chief Personnel Officer Joanne Machers seems to have been taking lessons from the 'Men In Black' in the Council's PR  department before preparing her report to the Performance Management portfolio holder, Cllr Pam Hargreaves. How else can we explain her view that an absence rate of 11.16 days per employee during April and June shows a ' very encouraging downturn in the (administration's) sickness figures.? ' Ms Machers knows very well that absence rates routinely dip during the Spring and Summer months just as they routinely increase during the Christmas shopping weeks and the bleak days of January and February.

It's the yearly figures that count and the news that absence at a predicted 12.01 days is set, once again, to exceed the Council's target of 11.05 days is the salient point she needs to be explaining.

In the year 2004/05 absence levels stood at 11.3 days per employee; in the year 2005/06 they rose to 12.3; the final figure for the year 2006/07 came in at 13.52 days - twice the average within the private sector. This latter figure is the equivalent of the council having about 260 its 5,200 employees absent at any one time. Yes I did say 260 and if we assume an average salary of £20,000 for those 260 missing employees the cost each year to the taxpayer works out at over £5m.

The Council has two targets for absence: its own target which it sets every year and which it has never managed to meet yet and the Government target for public service absence which is usually set between 8.5 and 9 days a year. Our own Council threw the towel in regarding the latter target years ago and now largely ignores it.

Most office workers in the Council work flexitime. This should, in theory, allow them to deal with those domestic issues that arise from time to time without missing work. Other less pampered workers in the private sector generally find them selves having to use up annual holiday in order to deal with the same issues. Council workers also have access to physiotherapists, stress counsellors and ‘health champions’. In fact, it seems the administration will try anything to avoid tackling this issue in the way we all know it should. This month, the Scrutiny Committee will discuss formalising an arrangement whereby those same workers will qualify to receive 5 days paid parental leave each year for each child together with a further 5 days unpaid leave. They will also discuss arrangements to work from home.

Perhaps one day, the administration will run out of ideas on ways to feather its own nest and start thinking instead about basic concepts such as value for money. But what am I saying? So far portfolio holder Cllr Hargreaves only suggestion has been to 'monitor the situation' which is rather like the Captain of the Titanic deferring a decision to launch the lifeboats while he counted the rivets popping out of the ships' hull.