Last week the NHS was being urged to get staff sickness under control in the wake of new figures that revealed workers take nearly 12 days off sick per year. This compares unfavourably with a figure of only 7.2% in the private sector. The BBC website reported that the ‘thinktank’ Reform said the Health Service was “shooting itself in the foot” by not making more use of the expertise it has in its workforce. The claim was that if the NHS followed the lead of private sector firms like BT, it could save up to £1 Billion by cutting sickness absence.
While I’m 100% sure that there are potential savings to be made in the NHS by reducing sickness absence, I think that the comments from Reform may be missing the point somewhat. Based on the experience of my University spin-off company Robertson Cooper, which has helped many NHS organisations improve well-being and employee engagement over the last 18 months, the Health Service has come a long way in this area. In many cases, sickness absence is now under control – particularly in Foundation Trusts and in areas where there is a strong vocational motivation to help others. Of course, keeping sickness low is important, but more common drivers for investing in staff well-being tend to be around staff retention, productivity, as well as quality and sustainability of service. Many NHS Trusts are now getting very sophisticated in terms of their understanding of and ambitions for well-being at work. In short, they are becoming more like private sector businesses – indeed, in the case of Foundation Trusts, they are only one step away from being private sector businesses!
At the end of the day, comparing public and private sector absence rates and finding that the former is higher is nothing new – it was ever thus – just check the CIPD figures for the last 10 years! Unfortunately, it is a fact of life in this and many other countries that the base levels of morale and energy are often lower in the public sector. Many good things are happening to change this, but since this is a culture that has taken over a century to form and solidify it will also take many, many years to change. The public sector has never been more like the private sector in terms of the way that its Boards and employees are held to account for their actions, performance and behaviours – so this bodes well for the future, but will take time to filter through to the hard-wired culture of organisations.
One of the key aspects of this change process concerns leadership. Absence management processes and management skills can only get you so far in terms of organisational development and it is your senior leaders that create the culture of the organisation, generate the role models, set the direction and provide an overarching sense of purpose for the workforce. So when my colleagues at my university spin off company have worked with NHS organisations, they have focused firmly on how leadership behaviour creates the stage on which staff are asked to perform. In my view, if you are talking publicly about where the NHS (and indeed all public sector organisations) need to look to boost employee engagement and take their work on the psychological well-being of staff to the next level, it would be a major mistake to ignore leadership. Focusing on improving absence management processes is already happening in most Trusts, which is fine – but on its own it’s just more of the same old-school thinking and, like the private sector, the NHS is moving on!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/health/7968723.stm
