Merseyside council staff took equivalent of 2,000 years off sick last year

Staff at Merseyside council took the equivalent of almost 2,000 years off sick last year, according to figures obtained by the Freedom of Information Act.

As reported by The Liverpool Daily Post, staff took a total of 443,179 days off due to sickness across the region's five councils.

Whilst the council claims its absence management is improving, the rate of sickness absence in the public sector is on average six days longer than the private sector.

"Reducing the level of sickness is a priority," said a council spokesman. "In the last year, we reduced the average number of days, despite swine flu, and set a target of reducing it further over the next year."

He added: "There are some areas of work which are more stressful than others, particularly in social care, and we have a range of supervision and support processes in place to help keep staff safe at work and to cope with the stresses involved."

The average number of days taken for each employee was 11. The Formby Times claims that it would take one member of staff 1,902 years to make up the lost time if they worked for 230 days in the year.
In a bid to drive the levels of staff sickness down, the spokesman explained what their absence management process involves: "Sickness absence is monitored on a weekly basis and we do a lot of work to identify the reasons why and to help staff return to work as soon as they are fit."

Sefton Council said their absence management procedures "involve dialogue with employees, active monitoring of attendance levels and corrective actions where attendance levels are unacceptably low."