Agenda item

Consideration was given to the report of the Head of Organisational Development which was presented to provide Elected Members with the opportunity to scrutinise and challenge the sickness absence performance for 2020/21, the continued actions to support improvement in attendance and recognise the positive attendance of the majority of the workforce.

The Head of Organisational Development spoke to the report and highlighted the main points contained therein.

A Member enquired regarding Managers use of the iTrent system and what support was in place for staff on long term sickness absence due to mental health issues.  The Head of Organisational Development gave assurances that training had been undertaken with Managers and they were now accessing the iTrent system correctly to extract sickness absence data from the system.  With regard to support for staff with mental health issues there was a range of support available which included Occupational Health support, the Employee Assistance programme and the Managing Attendance policy for Managers to apply in supporting individuals with sickness issues.

A Member enquired if CLT scrutinised the sickness absence reports to ensure the same level of management was consistently applied across the Council.  The Head of Organisational Development said that all quarterly information and statistical information was presented to CLT to review, and each Directorate had a continuous review of the top 20 long term cases with a view to enable those staff to return to work.

A Member referred to the breakdown of sickness absence by service area on page 43 of the report and enquired regarding provider services.  The Head of Organisational Development explained that related to frontline services i.e. domiciliary care, Court Mytton and Augusta House supported living.   She advised Members that there were overall figures in the report and figures excluding Covid related sickness absence. 

A Member commented on the massive pressures facing health and social care and felt that the figures were a direct consequence of what was taking place across the whole of the country.

The Corporate Director of Social Services said that 2021 had been a challenging year, particularly for frontline Social Services with regard to responding to the virus.  Staff had been under tremendous pressure and strain delivering services and trying to keep people safe in the community for a prolonged period.  Some staff had also been asked to work in different environments and this may have created more stress and anxiety.  Sickness figures were high but there had been significant mitigating factors with regard to Covid and also a national issue around recruitment of social care staff.  Currently they were trying to mitigate some of those pressures and working from a Blaenau Gwent perspective were trying to find solutions with Health colleagues who were also facing the same issues and pressures within their services. 

The Chair commended the entire Directorate for their hard work and commitment in exceptional circumstances.

The Head of Organisational Development reminded Members that there was an improving picture over the last year with regard to sickness absence, there were hotspots that were being reviewed, but there was an improvement in sickness absence in comparison to the previous year.

A Member commented that the Appendix showed that all local authorities had improved sickness absence figures and felt that the improvement came from staff homeworking and comparison with the next set of performance figures was needed to see if they would improve further. 

The Committee AGREED to recommend that the report be accepted and endorse Option 2; namely that the ongoing actions to support improvement in attendance be endorsed.