Council could adopt new sick pay regime

Rochdale Borough Council could adopt a new sick pay regime in a bid to bring down absence levels, following the lead of another Greater Manchester authority.

Rochdale Council says the number of days it lost to staff illness was among the lowest in the region during 2017/18 – and figures for the first half of this year show this is continuing to fall.

• www.rochdaleonline.co.uk/news-features/2/news-headlines/125519/stress-and-depression-leading-causes-of-longterm-sick-at-rochdale-council

However, current forecasts predict that the council will narrowly miss its target of 8.45 sick days per full time equivalent employee over the current financial year.

The council is now looking to learn lessons from Tameside Council, which had the lowest levels of sick leave of all the GM boroughs during 2017/18.

Officials from both authorities met in August and Tameside bosses explained the measures it had taken since 2015 to bring down staff absences.

These include a reduced sick pay scheme, a new way of managing absences and an updated health and wellbeing strategy.

Rochdale Council officer Ann Ridyard told a meeting of the authority’s Corporate Overview and Scrutiny Committee that sick pay was the ‘main difference’ between the two authorities.

Tameside gives staff on long term sick leave full pay for three months and half pay for three months – once they have completed two years continuous service.

By contrast, Rochdale has a graduated scheme, which means those who have five years continuous services are entitled to six months full pay and six months half pay if they are on long term sick leave.

Committee chair Councillor Michael Holly said he was pleased to hear about the collaboration with Tameside Council, but added: “We should not just be replicating what they are doing, we might have different circumstances , but what’s our response to those observations.

“It may be that they are doing that because of ‘x,y,z’ or it’s not applicable because of ‘x,y,z’.”

However he said there were ‘always lessons to be learned’ and would not like the findings to ‘dissipate and be forgotten about’.

Councillor Holly continued: “We are going in the right direction, but perhaps other councils are going even more in the right direction, we should be mindful of that.

“Looking at the figures, most are heading in the right direction, but are there any hotspots we should be concerned about as councillors?”

Ms Ridyard said that the ‘hotspots’ for sick leave were stress and depression within social care departments and neck or back problems within neighbourhood services.

“It does correlate with the role and the nature of the work they undertake,” she said.

Councillor John Hartley queried whether jobs would be held open indefinitely in the case of someone with a serious illness.

Ms Ridyard answered that it would not be kept open indefinitely.

She added: “It depends on the case, the reasons for the absence, the prognosis, what’s being done by themselves and an individual and us as an employer to return them to work.

“There are not set guidelines on holding a job open for a set amount of time. It’s very much done on service requirement and service demands and the individual case.”

Nick Statham, Local Democracy Reporter