Issue - meetings

Consideration was given to report of the Corporate Director Regeneration & Community Services.

The Head of Community Services presented the report which outlined the Directorate’s sickness absence performance and the proposed actions for improvement.  He said whilst sickness levels remained high it was important to note that the majority of employees have little or no sickness absence and attend work regularly, and the vast majority of Council employees have excellent attendance levels, as data indicated that 2,463 employees attended work every day during the period from April 2018 to March 2019 with the Council having an attendance level of 94.3%.

In terms of actions for improvement, the Officer said whilst there was evidence of managerial action in managing sickness the Directorate acknowledged that better use of the iTrent system was required.  A number of actions had been agreed, as outlined in Section 4.1 of the report, and these would be monitored by the Directorate Management Team, and sickness absence would continue to be a regular item on the Management Team Agenda.

A Member said more information was needed in terms of recording return to work meetings on the iTrent system. 

In response the Officer said the report was populated by Organisational Development, and it was the first time for the report to be presented in this format.  He confirmed that return to work meetings were taking place, but in some instances were not being reported through the iTrent system. He confirmed that the Member’s comments would be raised with OD.

A discussion ensued when the Corporate Director said it was important to note that return to work meetings were being undertaken, and Managers were complying with the Attendance Management Policy.  However, there were some areas within the Directorate that were unable to access the system, and this was being looked at, but he assured that return to work meetings were being undertaken, albeit not recorded on iTrent.

The Chair said the format of the report needed further consideration to ensure we get the information needed, and it would also be interesting to see what other Scrutiny Committees thought of the format.

The Committee AGREED to recommend that the report be accepted and having scrutinised the sickness absence performance information and proposed arrangements to improve attendance rates within the Regeneration & Community Services Directorate discussed further areas for improvement in order to drive forward performance improvement (Option 1).