Ending the "sickie" culture - investing in health

I seem to be writing quite a lot on health just now. It has become what HR people like to call a "hot topic." To keep up with developments I went along this morning to a conference called Healthy workplaces: building staff morale and measuring the impact on your bottom line" co sponsored by the Confederation of British Industry and AXA PPP Healthcare.

Susan Anderson, the CBI's HR policy director,had the latest results from the annual CBI AXA absence and labour turnover survey for 2007. The figures are very similar to those the previous year.

While absence fell on average from 7 days a year in 2006 to 6.7 days in 2007 the reality is that, for all the added attention given to absence management in the last few years, average absence levels in the UK are now only about a day and a half lower than they were 20 years ago. The public sector average is 9 days. All this adds up to a direct cost to the economy of £13.2 billion and indirect costs (including resulting loss of customers, goodwill etc) of around £20m.

Crap jobs

Susan noted that there was a disproportionate amount of absences on Mondays and Fridays - the days that are attached to the weekend, leading to suspicions that some people feign sickness in order to have a long weekend off work.

So what's to be done about it? I doubt that much will change until employers begin to get at the root of the problem. What is the problem? My own analysis is pretty simple: too many crap jobs, too much bad management.

Good mangers care about the people they work with. They care about workloads, they care about job content, they care if someone is troubled by something and they notice. It's called empathy.

Bad managers

Bad managers care only about their own agenda, meeting their budgets and sucking up to their immediate boss in order to get a promotion and more money. They think that nit-picking and micro-management is sensible.

Susan asked the conference delegates if anyone had ever "pulled a sickie." Not many hands went up but among those who did own up was Dudley Lusted, head of corporate healthcare development at AXA.

He recalled a time early in his career when, after the clocks went forward in the spring, he found it difficult to get to work on time. His boss was not pleased and after it happened a third time in the same week told him that any further lateness would result in his dismissal. Lusted slept in again the next day and, not wanting to lose his job, called in sick.

Why work sucks

Funnily enough I had read almost the same story in a book I am mentioning in my FT employment column this week. The book, Why Work Sucks And How To Fix It (yes, it's American) promotes the novel idea that people should be rewarded for their results rather than the time they spend at their desks.

If that were the case then a lot of these absence statistics would be a nonsense. Who would care if you were at work or not, so long as your work was completed?

I left full time employment seven years ago. In that time I have been ill a few times but I have managed to juggle my work commitments and deadlines around my illnesses. Am I lucky? Not entirely. I invest in my health through undertaking regular gym sessions.

Delegates were asked how much they spent on employee health annually? Only one of them knew - Lusted again: some £100,000 a year among 2,000 employees. That comes to an annual spend of £50 per employee.

Fit for work

In my business - that's me - I spend £500 per employee: me again. That's roughly the amount I pay to undertake regular gym sessions in order to stay fit and that means fit for work. This is important to me because I aim to play the long game in work. I don't like the thought of retirement. It should be noted that this is an investment in time as well as money. Since my time is expensive it's a big investment but it's non-negotiable. I consider it an essential business cost.

Lord McKenzie of Luton, Parliamentary under secretary of state at the Department of Work and Pensions was also speaking, much of it related to support for Dame Carol Black's recent report calling for "fit notes" from General Practitioners among other things.

I asked him why, when some people invested in their own fitness to ensure they could work and contribute to the economy, could they not set their fitness expenditure against tax? Why, if employers subsidise gym membership for their employees, is this contribution treated by HM Revenue and Customs as a "benefit in kind," in other words, a taxable perk?

Lord McKenzie's reply was disappointing, something about lines needing to be drawn, but he thought there might be scope for better tax treatment for those using a gym for rehabilitation.

This is just the kind of outdated thinking that ignores the need to transfer our health system from one that is focused on cures to one that focuses instead on prevention.