Mock Tribunal  - An interactive event to engage managers, to understand the company policies and procedures, the implication of their actions, the requirements of legislation and the key roles taken within a tribunal.

Focusing on their knowledge of company procedures and employment law, delegates participate in a challenging environment where their actual decisions impact on “winning or losing” the tribunal.

Specific objectives are agreed with the client and each programme is designed to reflect the organisations policies, procedures and challenges. An example outline is detailed below:

Introductions, aims and objectives
Summary of legislation, impact and costs
Discussion on company disciplinary procedures with short exercises
Interviewing and note taking Preparation for tribunal, teams receive a bundle to prepare for their tribunal
Mock tribunal
Review and key learning points
For other training see our training page.http://www.ukbct.co.uk/training/

To include:-

Managing poor performance and misconduct

Managing bullying and harassment

Managing absence 

Visit http://www.ukbct.co.uk/events/
for the presentations from
the Presence of Absence

Download the Summit Brochure
& Programme for full details visit
http://www.ukbct.co.uk/events/
PDF 1.3MB

Download the Summit
Speaker Profiles
by visiting http://www.ukbct.co.uk/events/
PDF 0.5MB
Please email susan@ukbct.co.uk for further details and dates.

Mock Tribunal

Why do smaller companies have fewer absences? And what can the big corporations do?David Bolchover
It’s a lovely, snug life, being employed by a large organisation. You stroll in to the office, you have a chat and a coffee and a couple of pointless meetings, all in the secure knowledge that your benevolent employer is going to put the same amount of cash in your bank account at the end of this month that it did last time.

But for society as a whole, this languid complacency is a disaster. Never mind the culture of welfare dependency. What about the culture of employer dependency? Britain needs a fundamental cultural shift away from the corporate beehive in favour of entrepreneurship and self-employment.

This week Dame Carol Black, the national director for health and work at the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement, produced a report revealing that ill-health costs the British economy more than £100 billion a year in benefit and health expenditure, forgone taxes and lost productivity. According to the report, the annual economic cost of absence due to sickness is greater than the entire NHS budget and equivalent to the gross domestic product of Portugal.

Dame Carol proposed a number of reforms, including replacing the traditional sick note with a “fit note”, in which a doctor focuses on what the worker can still do, rather than what he or she cannot. But these tackle the symptoms of the problem, not its underlying cause. What prompts all but the chronically incapacitated to take unnecessary time off ill is not pushover GPs, but a deep-rooted sickness in attitudes towards work.

Background
Sick note that will tell you’re fit to work
In search of a cure for the sick-note culture
The sick-note season opens
‘Back to work’ teams to steer people from benefits
Long-term unemployment may be destructive, but long-term employment can be too. At a very basic level, it shifts responsibility for putting food on the family’s table away from the individual to a third party. Not the State, but an employer. And the debilitating effects of this fundamental shunning of self-sufficiency is all too evident in the available statistics.

A 2007 study by the EU-funded European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, based on face-to-face interviews with about 30,000 people across Europe in different fields of work, revealed just how much mass employment in large organisations has sapped our drive and turned us into a bunch of dependent stuffed suits.

The gulf between the self-employed and the employed in their response to sickness is stark. Whereas the self-employed actually report higher levels of work-related health problems than the employed (45 per cent to 33 per cent), such as backache and stress, they take far fewer days off sick.

Here are the report figures on average annual sickness absence for the various categories of worker, in ascending order: one-person enterprise, 2.5 days; self-employed, 2.8 days; micro-enterprise (2-9 workers), 3.2 days; small enterprise (10-49 workers), 4.6 days; medium-sized enterprise (50-249 workers), 5.6 days; large enterprise (250+ workers), 7.4 days. Anyone see a pattern?

There are many on the Right who closely associate the public sector with higher levels of sickness absence. They are right, but only up to a point. According to a Health and Safety Executive report of 2006 that looked at the UK workplace, the average annual sickness absence per worker for a public sector organisation employing more than 250 people was 8 days, whereas for a similar-sized private company it was 6.9 days.

The study attributed some of this difference to the greater proportion of older people and women working in the public sector, both of whom report higher rates of absence in general. But the far more striking difference in absence rates was not between private and public, but once again, between large and small. For businesses with fewer than 25 employees, the average was 3.9 days.

What explains this discrepancy? The answer surely lies in a powerful cocktail of need and desire, most keenly experienced by the self-employed and gradually weakening for employees as their organisation becomes larger. The one-person band knows that the work will stay undone unless they themselves do it, and that they will only eat what they themselves kill. Necessity is the mother of all invention, and the avowed enemy of all malingering.

The self-employed also like their work more, making them more determined to ignore their ailments so they can devote attention to their source of pride and satisfaction. A 2005 global survey by the Career Innovation Group reported a significantly greater sense of achievement among self-employed workers compared with the employed. The content of their work may be identical to their employed counterparts, but they feel a much closer connection to the fruit of their labour and have a natural incentive to make their business as successful as possible.

The motivating consequences of connection and incentive then wane as the worker’s organisation grows. An able employee in a company of five knows that he is verging on the indispensable. An able employee in a company of 5,000 knows that he can drop dead tomorrow and corporate performance will register about as much movement as his corpse.

But the combination of ill-conceived government policy and the recent boom years has expanded the employment featherbed, making it all too easy to turn up, clock on and skive off. Since Labour took power in 1997, there has been a rise of almost 12 per cent in public sector employment.

Why bother putting yourself out and going through all the trials and tribulations of setting up on your own when a government-sponsored sinecure is up for grabs? Whereas the percentage of self-employed within the overall workforce grew from 11.4 per cent to 13.4 per cent in the ten years before 1997, it fell in the next ten back to 12.9 per cent. As well as a significant reduction in public sector employment, we need more far-reaching tax incentives for self-employment. How can the Government afford to do this? In the light of the sickness statistics, how can it afford not to?

Dame Carol’s “fit note” and “work-related health support” will add new layers of bureaucracy without challenging the root cause of rampant sickness absence. Fortunately, we have the credit crunch and global economic downturn to help us to forget about all those nasty little aches and pains. It may be the right moment for the employed to forget about “stress”, and learn instead about stress.

David Bolchover is the author of The Living Dead: The Truth about Office Life

Moreover, the vast majority of serving police officers feel only contempt for colleagues who take sick leave that they do not deserve. Any implication that, somehow, the police service condones or encourages the “shirking” of duties in favour of sick pay is completely unfounded.

Julie Nesbit

Chairman, Constables’ Central Committee, Police Federation of England & Wales

Sir, Andy Hayman’s commentary resonates strongly with my experience of occupational health (OH) in the police service.

This has shown me that there are two distinct patterns of sickness absence in police OH services.

First, come those instances that Hayman refers to as “genuine cases of illness”. Patterns of absence in such cases may be short-term or long. There may even be genuine medical reasons for recurrent spells of illness, although OH intervention often assists in the reduction in frequency of time taken off work, even where medical conditions are present. Experts refer to individuals’ differing abilities with coping, a phenomenon recognised by doctors.

Secondly come the cases that confound all, even the most strenuous attempts to improve attendance. Hayman implies that these are malingerers, a term now referred to in hushed tones as the “M-word” and one that only the bravest or most foolhardy would invoke for fear of being rebuked by a tribunal judge!

Like other public sector bodies, the Police Service has very generous sickness benefit arrangements. To top these already cast-iron financial safeguards, it is often the case that if an absence due to medical reasons can be shown to be linked to an on-duty injury then sick pay may continue for more than a year, continuing, in some cases, for several years. Managers and even in-house human resources experts are often paralysed to act faced with the bright lights of potentially litigious cases. These are the cases that skew sickness absence figures and trends, and are so damaging financially. It goes without saying that such incidents have a profound effect on the employment morale of all those who are at work and perceive these cases as morally unjust.

Dr John Challenor

Consultant Occupational Health Physician,

Yealmpton, Devon

Helen Nugent and Jack Sidders

Police forces lost more than one million days to long-term sick leave last year at a record cost of nearly £90 million, an investigation by The Times has found.

The cost has soared by more than 20 per cent in the past five years despite a drive within the police to reduce prolonged sick absences.

Freedom of information requests to the 43 forces in England and Wales revealed that stress, depression, back pain and other musculo-skeletal disorders are mainly responsible.

MPs and campaign groups said that the figures raised serious concerns over stress levels within the police force, the measures in place to tackle anxiety and the effectiveness of back-to-work plans.

Related Links
Ex-police chief says ‘weed out the shirkers’
A Sickening State
Dominic Grieve, the Shadow Home Secretary, said: “These alarming figures betray not only how stressful a job our police do but sadly how the efforts to combat this have not been as effective as we would hope.

“Sickness and stress needs to be well managed, including managers ensuring that sick days are taken appropriately. The rewards if we get this right are significant, not only in terms of improving the wellbeing of our dedicated police officers and having more of them on duty, but also through the cost savings that can be translated into even more officers on the streets.”

Of the 40 forces that responded to The Times, North Yorkshire Police recorded one of the biggest increases in long-term sick leave costs, up from £677,456 in 2002-03 to more than £1.6 million in 2007-08. In Suffolk the cost spiralled from a little more than £80,000 five years ago to more than £750,000 last year.

Although the Metropolitan Police managed to cut its long-term sick bill by £3 million over five years, the force still incurred the largest costs last year, of £30 million. Merseyside Police also had a big bill, with a total expense of £3.25 million for 2007-08.

Five years ago the total annual cost of long-term sick leave to the police was £73 million. Constabularies define extended sick leave as any period exceeding 28 consecutive days.

Matthew Elliott, chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “This is a huge financial and human loss for the police and taxpayers to bear. It’s clear that there is a serious failure to manage officers effectively to avoid damaging levels of stress, and a failure to support ill officers back into work.

“The model of running the nation’s policing off a spreadsheet in Whitehall is failing the police and the public. Central mismanagement has produced a system so tangled with red tape and targets that good officers are being driven into illness.”

The Times data show that the average level of long-term absence in the police is 8.3 days per employee per year, very close to the overall average of 8.4 days. The equivalent figure for combined short and long-term absence in the private sector is 7.2 and for the public sector 9.8.

Assistant Commissioner Tarique Ghaffur had reportedly complained of being undermined by Scotland Yard colleagues.

He has withdrawn claims that Met Commissioner Sir Ian Blair acted in a racist or other discriminatory way towards him.

The Met was not prepared to say how much had been paid to Mr Ghaffur.

The senior officer has signed a gagging clause and will step down from his role at the Metropolitan Police on Thursday.

‘Recognise the hurt’

A statement confirming the settlement was issued on Tuesday on behalf of Mr Ghaffur, Sir Ian Blair, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Richard Bryan, the Met Police and the Met Police Authority (MPA).

It read: “The MPA has paid a sum of money in settlement of Assistant Commissioner Ghaffur’s claims including contractual obligations and a contribution to his legal costs.

“Assistant Commissioner Ghaffur has withdrawn the proceedings and his claims that Sir Ian Blair and Deputy Assistant Commissioner Bryan acted in a racist or other discriminatory way towards him.

“The MPA and the commissioner wish to acknowledge the important service of Assistant Commissioner Ghaffur in the Met and his significant contribution to operational policing nationally during his 34-year career.

“They recognise the hurt he has felt over the past 18 months.”

‘Love and admire’

Mr Ghaffur was effectively suspended in September after publicly announcing he was suing his employer for racial discrimination.

In a press conference he claimed he was sidelined, discriminated against and humiliated in his role as boss of security planning for the 2012 Olympics.

He said: “I’m not seeking massive monetary benefits and I do not have grievances against the whole of the Met, an organisation that I dearly love and admire.”

The allegations sparked the race row within the Met leading to a boycott of ethnic minority recruitment by the Metropolitan Black Police Association.

In the following weeks, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith announced an assessment of how ethnic minority officers are treated in police forces throughout England and Wales.

London Mayor Boris Johnson also launched an inquiry into alleged racism within the Metropolitan Police.

Mr Ghaffur began his career as a Pc with Greater Manchester Police (GMP) in Salford in 1974, two years after his family had been forced to flee his birthplace of Uganda by the dictator Idi Amin.

The idea is for GPs in England to spell out those tasks workers can perform rather than the traditional “sick note” focusing on what they cannot do.

There will also be more support to help people back to work with firms encouraged to promote healthier living.

A report in March warned ill-health was costing the economy £100bn a year.

Returning to work

Ministers have accepted recommendations made by government health advisor Dame Carol Black that the system of GPs issuing sick notes, in place since 1948, should be overhauled.

Trials replacing paper notes with electronic fit notes are underway and, if successful, the new system could be in place by 2010.

  Poor health can prevent people fulfilling their potential, leaving them more likely to slip into poverty and social exclusion

Health Secretary Alan Johnson
Q&A: Work and health

The new fit notes, outlining what duties an employee could do, would be passed on to employers if he or she agreed.

It is hoped this would leave managers better informed about their workers’ needs and able to discuss ways of keeping them in work such as changing their working hours or altering their duties.

The notes are intended to form part of a package of support to help staff with problems stay in work and to return to the workplace as soon as possible.

Dame Carol’s report highlighted the impact on economic productivity of improving occupational health and reducing the number of people, more than 2.7 million of whom, are on incapacity benefits.

Unions have long complained that there is insufficient support for people unable to work due to sickness or injury.

Health Secretary Alan Johnson, who has also announced a review of the health of NHS workers, said he wanted to help encourage people off work to return as “soon as possible”.

GPs role

“Helping people stay in work doesn’t just have an economic imperative,” he said.

“It has a moral and social one too. Poor health can prevent people fulfilling their potential, leaving them more likely to slip into poverty and social exclusion.”

A GP has the power to sign someone off work for six months before the case is passed onto a benefits administrator.

But some GPs have been frustrated with the current system because they are unable to assess what work an employee can do if they do not know what their workplace responsibilities are.  OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH FACTS
172 million working days lost through sickness in 2007
This cost more than £100bn in lost productivity
2.6 million people were on incapacity benefits in May
Absences of four days or more account for 40% of days lost
Nearly six million people in the UK say they have a long-standing health condition
Sources: CBI; Black report

About 350,000 people a year transfer from sick notes to benefits, a figure which experts believe could be cut significantly with earlier and more effective intervention.

However, some GPs are concerned that their independence may be threatened.

Dr Laurence Buckman, chairman of the British Medical Association’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.”

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 physios, counsellors and other health professionals.

Health experts could also be present at job centres in the future to assess the needs and problems of job applicants - and employment advisors in GP surgeries.

Economic boost

Dame Carol said attitudes to sickness among employers, especially regarding mental health problems, needed to change if progress was to be made.

“We have to make an employer believe that if he invests in the health and wellbeing of his staff, it will meet his bottom line,” she said.

  Workers made ill by their jobs need early access to rehabilitation and better support to help them get back to work

Brendan Barber, TUC

Liberal Democrat health spokesman Norman Lamb said: “This is a serious issue which deserves a sophisticated approach, but we must be wary of moving to a system where doctors find themselves policing the benefits system rather than treating the sick.”

For the Conservatives, Chris Grayling said: “The government has had 10 years to address these sorts of problems but has done nothing. So why should we believe them that this is going to make a difference?”

Business groups said the interests of employers and their workers should be aligned when it came to improving occupational health.

But unions said the proposals did not go far enough in assisting people or improving how safety and health risks are managed and policed in the workplace.

“Workers made ill by their jobs need early access to rehabilitation and better support to help them get back to work as soon as they are able to,” said TUC general secretary Brendan Barber.

Fast class (1 hour): aimed at relevant stakeholders who want an introduction to the subject matter.

Master class (2 hours): for relevant stakeholders who want a more extensive introduction to the subject matter.

Day event (6 hours): aimed at those seeking a comprehensive guide to the subject matter

Business Centred Therapy offers a Certificate in Attendance Management. This consists of the following 12 modules taken as day events. Terms and conditions apply.

Reframing absence
Aim: to introduce and explore absence as one aspect of a larger process

The presence of absence
Aim: to explore the dynamics of managing equitably the team that is present and the member who is absent

Managing individual absence

Aim: to look at the difficulties and tensions of managing individual members of staff when they are not at work

Integrity
Aim: to develop the skills needed to manage situations of conflict

The life/work equilibrium
Aim: to attend to the dynamics of the relationship between life and work

Working conditions: conditions that work

Aim: To develop working environments that support mental and occupational well-being

Beyond political correctness: practical diversity
Aim: To provide an insight into working with real life scenarios – responding to differences in race, culture, gender, sexuality

Return to work: interview and process
Aim: to chart the processes that need to be in place to sustain a permanent return to work.

7th October 2008: Business Action on Health, the Business in the Community
(BITC) campaign committed to improving the health and wellbeing of the UK
workforce, today publishes the 2008 report, ‘Nurture your people & Grow your
business’. The report reviews the progress of the campaign one year on,
highlights successes and key trends, and outlines future aspirations.
A year from the launch of the Business Action on Health campaign, health and
wellbeing has emerged as a key corporate responsibility issue. Research
conducted by the campaign with FTSE100 companies reveals that 81 percent of
companies now report publicly any commitment or activity to increase the health
and wellbeing of their employees, up from 68 percent in 2007. Forty of these
companies report on the health and wellbeing of their employees in their annual
report and 65 companies are including these details in their Corporate
Responsibility or Sustainability reports.
Crucially, there has also been a dramatic increase in the number of FTSE 100
companies reporting on their progress on health and wellbeing using quantitative
measures, up from 7 last year to 23 in 2008. This demonstrates a significant
rise in the number of employers measuring key indicators of health and
wellbeing, such as levels of absenteeism, and reporting statistically on the
impact of company programmes; reporting the number of employees enrolling in a
healthy eating programme for example.
Louise Aston, Campaign Director, Business Action on Health, commented:
“Significant milestones have been reached over the past year and the issue of
health and wellbeing in the workplace has, it seems, finally reached its tipping
point. However, we still have a long way to go and ambitious targets to meet. We
have committed ourselves to raising the proportion of FTSE 100 companies
reporting and measuring on employee health, using quantitative measures, from 23
to 75 percent by 2011.”
Although this research demonstrates an increase in the number of employers
promoting and reporting on health and wellbeing in the workplace, too few
companies are making tangible efforts to approach the issue strategically and
measure progress quantitatively. For example, while many companies measure
absenteeism through line managers or self-assessment forms, fewer than half of
companies collate these centrally. Moreover, just under two in three of those
reporting on health and wellbeing have set improvement targets, with under half
of these employers reporting publicly on the targets set and their performance
against these targets.
Health and wellbeing programmes are also becoming a vital weapon in the battle
for talent. According to YouGov research commissioned by Business Action on
Health, six in 10 workers would consider leaving employers who fail to address
workplace health and wellbeing and 83 percent consider prospective employers’
attitudes towards health an important factor when making a decision about a job.

“Since the launch of the campaign in October 2007, health and wellbeing has
become increasingly important, not only as part of the HR and corporate social
responsibility agendas, but as a core business issue for UK business leaders,”
commented Stephen Howard, Chief Executive, Business in the Community. He added:
“the business case and return on investment for investing in employee health
and wellbeing programmes is becoming more apparent - employers can reduce
absence, recruitment and retention costs, and increase employee engagement and
productivity at work.”
Julian Hunt, Director of Communications, Food and Drink Federation, said:
“Our industry has long recognised that a healthy, committed workforce is vital
to business success and it’s good to see more companies coming round to that
way of thinking. We’re delighted to be involved in the BITC campaign and
sponsoring the ‘Nurture your people & Grow your business’ report, which
reinforces the point that there’s a strong business case for investing in
workplace wellbeing.”
Next steps for the campaign include research on key areas, such as absence
management, and the development of three new toolkits for employers: Emotional
Resilience, Physical Activity and Skills. These practical toolkits will be
launched in the New Year at a BITC conference aimed at HR practitioners.
Longer-term, the campaign is calling on all BITC members, as well as other
companies, to commit to reporting publicly on the health and wellbeing of their
employees as a boardroom issue by 2011. The campaign is also working alongside
the Government’s Health Work Wellbeing initiative to establish standardised
criteria which enable companies to report on, and manage, health and wellbeing
performance as a boardroom issue as well as documenting the return on their
investment in workforce health.

Depression is a common reasons for sick leave
People who have long spells of sick leave for psychiatric reasons are twice as likely to die from cancer as healthier employees, research suggests.

The “unexpected” finding could help pick out at-risk groups, the University College London researchers reported in the British Medical Journal.

Among 6,500 civil servants, those who had taken a long period of sick leave had a 66% higher risk of early death.

The cancer risk may be due to depressed people not seeing a doctor soon enough.

Sickness records were assessed from London-based employees in 20 Whitehall departments between 1985 and 1988 and compared with mortality up until 2004.

  It would be useful for this information to be collected because we could identify groups with high risk of serious health problems

Jenny Head, study leader

Overall 288 people died during the study.

The 30% of people who had one or more stints of at least seven days off work had a 66% increased risk of premature death compared to those who had not had any long periods of sick leave, it was found.

The highest mortality risk was seen in those who had been off work with heart disease, stroke or related conditions who had more than four times the risk of death than those who had no long sickness absences.

Perhaps more surprisingly, absences due to common respiratory conditions and infections were also associated with an increased risk of death, the researchers said.

Possible reasons

Study leader Jenny Head said it was the first time work absence for psychiatric reasons such as depression had been linked to death from cancer.

“That was the unexpected finding,” she said.

“We didn’t study the reason, but it might be people that tend to be depressed might be less likely to seek help from a doctor or being prone to depression could affect your cancer prognosis or depression might affect adherence to treatment.”

She added: “It would be useful for this information to be collected because we could identify groups with high risk of serious health problems”.

An accompanying editorial in the BMJ suggested that information on sickness absence could provide GPs with a useful tool to identify workers with an increased risk of serious illness or risk of death.

Employers could also use the information to target help for work-related health problems such as stress, it said.

Dr Stuart Whitaker, senior lecturer in occupational health at the University of Cumbria, said: “It would seem sensible to expect that those who do take longer and more frequent periods of sickness absence are suffering with more severe health problems, than those who do not go off sick, and might be expected to have higher premature death rates.

“This study helps to demonstrate that and goes further in being able to show the increased risk for different types of conditions.”

However he added more work was needed to determine how occupational health services could identify those at high risk and what interventions they would then use to prevent early death.

Why attend the East Midlands Attendance Management Summit 2008?

According to the latest CBI survey findings, sickness absence costs the UK economy over £13 billion, yet many organisations are prepared to ignore or absorb these costs. Absence from work, both short and long-term is a reality and is on the increase.

This Summit is the first of its kind to be held in the East Midlands. You will learn why employee well-being is good for business; hear from experts in occupational health, employment law and conflict resolution, improve your methods of rehabilitating the short and long term sick and leave inspired to build a culture of attendance in your organisation.

The programme allows opportunities for you to network and exchange ideas with your peers.

Summit fees:

An individual place at the Summit costs £250 +vat Second and subsequent places can be booked at the reduced rate of £220 +vat per place. Fees cover the full day with lunch and refreshments, plus preferential booking onto the 2009 Summit

Find out more and book tickets for The East Midlands Attendance Management Summit. Closing date for booking is 27th October 2008.