Rise in staff sick days bucks provincial trend
Public board’s average of 17.52 days in 2022-23 widens gap with other school boards
Another rise in annual employee sick days at Hamilton’s public school board is bucking a downward trend at many other Ontario school boards.
Figures presented to trustees at their Tuesday human resources committee show board employees were off for an average of 17.52 sick days in 2022-23, up from 16.71 in the previous school year.
The 2022-23 results were not only the highest in more than a decade, but also above the average of 15.89 sick days at 61 other unnamed school boards participating in an absence study.
“It’s a good data point and way to measure where we stand across the sector,” human resources executive officer Jason Alexander told trustees of the study, the results of which were included in a public staff report for the first time.
The School Board Co-operative Inc. study began tracking absences as of the 2017-18 school year and shows the Hamilton board has exceeded the average for participating boards every year since then.
The annual gap between the average for the Hamilton board and other participating boards has been as high as 2.12 sick days over that period, but narrowed to 0.41 in 2021-22, when the study average was 16.3 days.
But the study average dropped to 15.89 days in 2022 while the board’s rose to 17.52, widening the gap to 1.63 days.
The board did have some good news, though, as sick days for the current school year’s first four months dropped slightly, with the average of 6.07 between Sept. 1 and Dec. 31 down by 0.15 days from the same period in 2022.
Trustee Todd White said the latest results “look a bit promising,” but the study shows the board is consistently above other boards even if it mirrors their overall trend.
“That’s kind of the glaring piece from sort of an average person glancing at this report,” he said. “I’m curious if staff have a response to that.”
Associate director Matthew Gerard said he doesn’t believe the board’s sick days “are that different from the provincial average” in recent years, often reflecting local conditions, like the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Each district school board will have a different series of, for instance, hospitals and medical facilities supporting the backlog of surgeries or other medical procedures that may have been delayed during the pandemic,” he said.
“Pre-existing disease or other conditions that may limit attendance at work may also play a factor in that, so I’d suggest there’s a lot of external factors to the board that may actually contribute to this, those that we can’t control but they may suggest or at least give us a reason for those slight variances that we’re experiencing.”
Trustees began trying to rein in spending on sick days in 2016, after an audit found employees took an average of 13.23 days per year, about three more than the provincial norm.
At the time, the board estimated each average sick day cut would save $1.2 million per year. But annual averages have mostly been on an upward trajectory since then, only dipping in 2019-20 and 2020-21, when COVID limited in-person classes.
While the board initiated a plan in August 2019 to cut average sick days by a half-day each year until they dropped to 12, missed targets led it to abandon the goal last fall and instead focus on wellness programs to help employees return to work.