Issue - meetings

Consideration was given to the report of the Head of Organisational Development which was presented to provide Members with the opportunity to scrutinise and challenge the sickness absence performance for 2019/20.

The Head of Organisational Development advised that the report provided Members with an opportunity to scrutinise and challenge the sickness absence performance for 2019/20. It also outlined the continued actions to support improvement in attendance and recognised the positive attendance of the majority of the workforce.

The Head of Organisational Development added that the overall year end outturn figure for the Council of 13.91 days per full time equivalent employee which was 13.48 days excluding Covid-19 sickness. This was an increase from the previous year’s outturn of 12.66 days and exceeded the target set of 11 days. This information was further detailed in the appendices attached to the report. The Officer further referred to historical measures put in place to improve attendance and ongoing measures in an attempt to address attendance.

A Member raised concerns around the continued increase in sickness within the Authority and referred to the work of the Task and Finish Group which had seen little improvement in the figures. However, although there was a pandemic which would affect sickness levels it was felt that sickness levels remained very high across the Council.

The Head of Organisational Development advised that the Policy had been fundamentally reviewed and it was concluded that it was fit for purpose by the Task and Finish Group.  The iTrent HR system provides detailed information to managers to enable the management of sickness absence.

In response to further concerns around sickness levels and performance it was advised that the information was presented to CLT on a quarterly basis and formed part of the Performance and Finance report which was presented to Corporate Overview Scrutiny Committee on a quarterly basis.

A further question was raised in relation to individual departments sickness levels being monitored, the Head of Organisational Development advised that each Directorate would be reviewing the top 20 cases.  Last year reports were considered at the respective Scrutiny Committees with an overarching report presented to the Executive.

A Member asked if Blaenau Gwent could work in collaboration with a neighbouring Authority to ascertain how they addressed sickness levels. It was confirmed that this exercise was undertaken as part of the Task and Finish Group work.

In response to a request to bring further reports through the political process, it was stated that the Authority was responding to Covid-19 at present and capacity would be an issue.

The Committee AGREED that the report be accepted and endorse Option 1, the Scrutiny Committee having scrutinised the sickness absence performance information and the ongoing actions to support improved attendance within the Council identify any further areas for improvement in order to drive forward performance improvement.