Ark Workplace Risk ™

Fit For Work? Making The Most Out Of "Fit Notes"

Do you suffer from excessive or extended staff absenteeism?
The Government have announced recently that employee 'fit notes' are to be phased in, in an attempt to cut the amount of money lost to the UK economy from workplace absenteeism.
The scheme requires GPs in England to spell out those tasks employees can perform rather than the traditional 'sick note' focusing on what they cannot do.
Ministers have accepted the recommendations made by government health adviser Dame Carol Black that the system of GPs issuing sick notes, in place since 1948, should be overhauled.
According to the Health and Safety Executive 28 million days were lost overall in 2007 due to work-related ill health. This equates to around 1.4 days per worker.

Top Doctors Concerns

The BMA in commenting on the Government proposals on work and health suggest that they may be a step in the right direction, but have warned that GPs should not be used to police sick leave. Commenting on the proposal, Dr Laurence Buckman, chair of the BMA's GP committee, said:

'The new 'fit note' has potential, but we would like to see the findings of this evaluation because it's crucial GPs can continue to act as the patient's advocate and don't end up policing the system for the Department for Work and Pensions.'

Trials replacing the existing paper sick notes with electronic fit notes have already started and, if successful, the new system could be in place across England and Wales by 2010.

Bigger Package

The notes are intended to form part of a much larger package of measures designed to support employers and engage health professionals to help staff with problems remain at work or return to the workplace as soon as possible.
Other proposals include a pilot scheme for those newly off sick to be allocated a case manager to tailor a back-to-work programme for them with the help of physiotherapy, counsellors and other health professionals.

Monitoring for a healthy culture

Although the scheme maybe introduced in 2010, managers need to continue to monitor staff sickness and absenteeism. Monitoring and reporting are vital parts of a health and safety culture. Management systems must allow the management team to receive both specific (e.g. incident-led) and routine reports on the performance of health and safety policy.
Much day-to-day health and safety information needs be reported only at the time of a formal review. But only a strong system of monitoring can ensure that the formal review can proceed as planned – and that relevant events in the interim are brought to the board's attention.

Good practice

• Effective monitoring of sickness absence and workplace health can alert senior management to underlying problems that could seriously damage performance or result in accidents and long-term illness.
• The collection of workplace health & safety data can allow senior management to benchmark the organisation's performance against others in its sector.
• Appraisals of senior managers can include an assessment of their contribution to health & safety performance.
• Senior Management can receive regular reports on the health & safety performance and actions of contractors.
• Some organisations have found they win greater support for health & safety by involving employees in monitoring

What should you do

Senior Management should ensure that:

• Appropriate weight is given to reporting both preventive information (such as progress of training and maintenance programmes) and incident data (such as accident and sickness absence rates);
• Periodic audits of the effectiveness of management structures and risk controls for health and safety are carried out;
• The impact of changes such as the introduction of new procedures, work processes or products, or any major health and safety failure, is reported as soon as possible to the board;
• There are procedures to implement new and changed legal requirements and to consider other external developments and events

Consequences of inaction

Failure to audit their systems and performance will mean:

• Senior Managers will not understand the full financial and resource implications of staff absenteeism and ill health;
• Senior Managers will be unable to put into place measures to prevent such absenteeism and ill health; and
• Senior Managers will see an increased risk to the organisation’s costs and performance

Safer with Ark

Top brand clients work with Ark Workplace Risk to optimise their control and management of risk.
To explore how you can be safer by enhancing your Health & Safety and risk management systems, just use the form below or call Jody Horne on +44 (0) 20 7397 1450.