Croydon Council apparently saved £600,000 last year after overhauling its approach to sickness absence.
They say that this was due to their "promoting a culture of attendance", rather than focusing on absence policies.
Their average sickness levels are down from 14.5 days per person four years ago to 5.9 days today which is apparently one of the lowest of all 32 London boroughs.
In our experience the vast majority of SME's that we deal with have much lower levels of absenteeism so perhaps achieving such a reduction would be much more difficult. However from the same experience we do know that there is room for improvement as employers generally are reluctant to carry out formal interviews with returnees and some will even ignore the absence altogether.
Croydon Council says that they had "reversed the culture" so that managers were no longer fearful of discussing and challenging sickness absence. That there was reluctance by managers to tackle the issue at an early stage. As a result the council retrained their managers to tackle their retuning employees and to talk openly about sickness and well-being with them. Return-to-work interviews were made mandatory, regardless of the length of absence.
Most organizations are looking to reduce costs and absenteeism does result in a cost that can be tackled; given the will. There is a definite correlation between the generosity of occupational sick pay schemes and absence and whilst such schemes are of positive benefit in other areas they should be "policed" well in order to minimize abuse.
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