Earlier this month the manufacturers’ organisation the EEF and Jelf Employee Benefits jointly published the Sickness Absence Survey 2015. This document contains many interesting facts and figures on current absence trends - and the steps employers are taking to tackle this issue. As such this survey will be useful to employers of all sizes and sectors in the UK.

The full survey document can be viewed via this link. This includes expert opinion from the head of Jelf’s Healthcare and Group Risk division Iain Laws, and Professor Sayeed Khan the Chief Medical Adviser at EEF. Details of some of the media views on this survey will be provided next week on this blog also.

There are also some themes in the survey that have been long-running staples of this blog’s content over the last 5 years, and in particular the dual topics of Fit Notes and the new Fit for Work service. So what does the survey tell us on these areas, and is any progress being made?

Let’s start with Fit Notes. For those not particularly familiar with this subject it’s worth pointing out that family GP’s were required to replace the old - and often badly used - Sick Note with the new Fit Note back in 2010. The driver for this change was a simple one. Sick Notes often resulted in an employee being signed-off from all work owing to an illness or injury, whereas Fit Notes were instead seeking to isolate if there were any areas of work that could still be undertaken, and if so what minor adjustments the employer could make to enable this to happen. In this way it was hoped that less employees would become long-term sickness absentees, which would be beneficial for the employee, their family, the employer and by extension the wider UK economy.

So Fit Notes were undoubtedly a good idea in principle. There were various early teething problems with the new system though, with one of the most obvious being that very few GP’s were being trained in the use of the new Fit Note. As a result many Doctors were continuing to treat them in much the same way as the previous Sick Note system. In October 2013 I heard Dame Carol Black, one of the architects of the Fit Note system, say that only 10% of GP’s had been trained in their use at that time. There was however the strong suggestion that this training was being advanced, and that many more would be up to speed on this system in the near future.

Which brings us to the 2015 Sickness Survey. One of the many useful facts within this document is the indication that only 5000 family Doctors have so far been trained in health and work (out of 40584 GP’s from the September 2014 census). Which even my schoolboy maths makes out to be just over 12% of the total. So in one calendar year only an additional 2% of GP’s have received training in this key component of their work and patient care. At this rate it would take until the late 2050’s to ensure universal coverage and understanding, and even that assumes that the existing GP’s don’t leave the profession in the meantime.

This is clearly a problem that needs to be addressed by Government, as Fit Notes are a key component to help employers better manage sickness absence.

Which takes me to the newer, but no less important, initiative of Fit for Work. This is the next logical step to early intervention by medical professionals to prevent potentially long term sickness absence, and is currently being rolled-out across the UK. The Fit for Work website includes details of the service and the geographical areas where it is currently available. Yet the key to this service will be that family GP’s are both aware of its existence, and how and why they should refer their patients to this assessment. Sadly the evidence from the Fit Notes initiative suggests that this may not be the case for some time.

This problem could, and arguably should, have been avoided had the Fit for Work service been a mandatory action for family Doctors as originally intended (and indeed the EEF are still calling for this change). This is unlikely to change in the short-term however, so in the absence of a legal directive it may well fall to employers to ensure that absent employees are referred to either a full Occupational Health assessment, or Fit for Work where the former service is not available.

The bottom line is that, for the foreseeable future, the onus rests with employers to review their absence recording, monitoring, and resolutions to produce the best outcomes for all.

Best regards

Steve

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