States staff are off ill more often

Just over 51,000 days of sickness were taken off last year, up from 46,000 in 2015.

But the States’ figures are not as bad as in the UK, with an average of 6.9 days per employee per year, compared with 8.4 days in the UK public sector.

Nurses took the most days off sick, with more than 15,000 days – about 30% of the public sector total.

States chief operating officer Jason Moriarty said the organisation was working to tackle the problem.

‘Over the last year we have been focusing on initiatives to support the health and wellbeing of our employees with the aim of reducing the number of days lost to preventable causes of sickness and to help staff return to work as quickly as practicable including phased returns after long spells of sickness,’ he said.

‘In order to do this we have launched the employee assistance programme, which is a free service for States of Guernsey employees and their families, designed to help manage the demands of everyday life.

‘This service is independent of the States of Guernsey and is completely confidential. Depending on what our staff need, they can get free counselling support or practical help about a whole range of issues, including managing stress, dealing with bereavement and advice on caring for dependants.’

The States has also increased the advice, coaching and prompting to managers, in a bid to try and help them identify issues in the early stages and ensure they are using best practice to support staff and manage the impact on services.

‘We have also continued our “Be a Wellbeing” campaign through e-letters covering the five pillars of wellbeing – culture and environment, rest and recovery, physical health, mental and emotional health and diet and nutrition,’ Mr Moriarty said.

‘We will be building on this over the next year by working with Public Health to introduce mental health and wellbeing champions across the organisation by the end of 2020. This should continue to help encourage healthy living and wellbeing amongst our workforce. It is early days for some of these initiatives, the intention is that together they will help to support staff and their wellbeing and improve attendance.’

The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development keeps track of trends in the UK. In the most recent health & wellbeing survey from earlier this year, it was found that on average public sector employees had 8.4 days of absence over the last year, compared with 4.4 days in private sector services, 5.6 days in manufacturing and production and 6.3 in the non-profit sector.

In its research, the institute stated that while absence levels in the private services and non-profit sectors have shown a steady decline over the last decade, there has been little change in public sector absence over the last few years, although it is lower than at the beginning of the decade, when it sat at 9.3 days in 2010.