Council sick day statistics are revealed
Average of 10 days taken off
South Lanarkshire Council employees are expected to take an average of 10 days off sick this year.
The projected figure for 2018/19 was revealed in a report prepared for a meeting of the authority’s Employee Issues Forum on Tuesday (September 4).
The forum met to discuss attendance statistics, occupational health issues and accident/incident figures.
The report compared absence statistics for June this year with June 2017, and noted that musculoskeletal and psychological conditions remain the main reasons for absence.
However, while there has been decrease of 109 days lost to musculoskeletal conditions, the days lost due to psychological conditions has increased by 693 days.
The figure was queried by Clydesdale West councillor Lynsey Hamilton, who said: “The 693-day increase on work days lost due to psychological conditions is very concerning.
“As a council, South Lanarkshire has a duty of care towards their staff.
“Mental health over the past few years has moved up the agenda and lots of great work has been done against the stigma of mental health and helping to identify when people are suffering from mental ill health. However these figures show that a lot more work needs to be done.
“Council budgets are tight and staff are being asked to do more and more during there working day which understandably leads to more stress and anxiety on the council’s workforce. The council needs to make sure the right mechanism are in place and are working.
“At the time of the budget the unions called for a stress audit to take place for the workforce and considering the figures, I will be making inquiries into if that will take place or not.”
SLC’S Head of Personnel Services, Kay Mcveigh, responded: “Any work days lost by employees due to psychological conditions is something that the council takes very seriously.
“We have in place robust measures to help employees who may be suffering from any type of psychological condition.
“Thankfully in recent years people have been much more confident about coming forward to discuss mental health issues with their employers. We believe that this is, in part, the reason why there has been a rise in the number of days employees have reported absent due to psychological illness.
“It is also important to put the figures into context.
“The increase of 693 days is for the council as a whole, and as we have 15,000 employees this is a very small increase – 0.2 per cent of work days available for that month.
“We do recognise, however that any increase needs to be carefully monitored and we will continue to do everything we can to help employees suffering from any psychological condition.”