Anyone watching the headlines on health and employment would be forgiven for thinking the UK is either a sick nation or a population of malingerers. Every year 176m days are lost through sick leave – 8.4 days per employee – and the cost to business is £11bn a year.
One conclusion might be that UK workers take a ‘sickie’ whenever the whim takes them. The government’s white paper Choosing Health also suggests there is a sicknote culture that needs to be tackled.
Dig a little deeper, however, and small business owners will be glad to find confirmed what they knew all along: namely that small businesses are made of sterner stuff. Alarmed by the negative headlines and statistics, the Federation of Small Businesses decided to research whether absenteeism posed a genuine problem for their members. The key finding from its survey, published
last November, is that the average small businesses loses just 1.8 days per employee to absence every year.
It seems unlikely that small companies will have to lobby local GPs as interim HR director Ray Smelt once did. He wrote to all GPs close to a factory where he managed staff to inform them that the company did not have any ‘hard jobs’ any more as everything was automated. “Employees would tell their GP that they had a hard job and be signed off,” he recalls. “On their return-to-work certificate it would say ‘fit for light duties’. As employees were machine-operators who simply pushed buttons, it was difficult to see how much lighter their duties could be.”
In contrast to the problems experienced in big corporations and the public services, the FSB report paints a positive picture of small businesses and health issues in the workplace. Almost half (43%) of the small firms surveyed reported no sickness absence in the past year, with business owners themselves taking an average of three days’ sick leave per year.
The figures do not surprise Ben Wilmott, policy adviser at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. “Smaller companies tend to have lower levels of absence because it’s easier for people in a small workforce to see the impact of their absence on colleagues and friends,” he says. “Managers and owners are also likely to have closer relationships with the people they manage.”
No pay, no gain
It’s not just loyalty and altruism that keep employees at work, of course, but the lack of sick pay too. Statutory sick pay only kicks in after four consecutive days of illness and is £70 a day; hardly an incentive to stay off sick. This compares unfavourably to the full pay that employees in the public sector can enjoy for long stretches, although many small firms will also pay staff their normal rate.
Whether it’s down to loyalty or financial hardship of employees, small businesses may encounter the opposite problem to unexplained absenteeism: that is, staff returning to work before they are better. “The danger with a small company is that you have a driven manager and a loyal team. You have to be clear in this situation that employees should stay at home until they are better,” advises Wilmott.
Even motivated businesses are prone to the odd ‘sickie’, however, and there is a danger that these can mushroom into a prevailing culture. Joanne McCarthy, an adviser with Workplace Health Connect, a free advisory service of the Health and Safety Executive, cites a nursery that rang the advice line because it was plagued by staff frequently going off sick.
Workplace Health Connect suggested putting in place some basic processes such as logging sick leave and conducting back-to-work interviews. “Sometimes just knowing that they are allowed to interview staff about health is a huge relief for employers,” says McCarthy. “After all,” adds her colleague Louise Bisdee, “the contract between employer and employee is about work and so an employer is entitled to know if there’s an ongoing health issue.”
No margin for error
Even with small companies’ good track record on sickness absence, there’s no room for complacency as unexpected absences hits them far harder than their larger rivals. “Without warning a small firm can find itself without a large proportion of its workforce,” points out the FSB report.
“Just one person being off work can have a disproportionate effect: one out of 10 workers is 10% of the workforce,” says Tim Baker, commercial director of Norwich Union Healthcare. The fear of being hit by a wave of staff absence is behind the growing popularity among small firms for taking out private health insurance policies for staff, which Baker claims is growing at 4% a year.
“The uptake of group schemes continues to grow, even at a time when the NHS is investing, as employers realise their staff can be treated quicker privately,” he says. “Modern diseases like stress and backache are not areas the NHS caters for best.”
Health insurance also provides a degree of protection against ‘presenteeism’, a situation where sick employees come to work but do not function at their optimum. Like other health insurers, Norwich Union offers cover in a modular format with companies able to choose from a menu of options including more hospital cover, psychiatric treatment, dental and optical care. A basic package for five staff would come in at around £1,200 a year.
Like dealing with an illness itself, the key to tackling problems of staff absenteeism is to recognise that it exists and to make small alterations to tackle it. Small companies may be leading the way in tackling the issue but by ensuring staff know bogus sick leave will not be tolerated and helping genuine cases to return to work as quickly as possible, small businesses can make themselves even more competitive.
Source: New Business Magazine