Sickness by ethnicity

Report: 4
Date: 18 January 2001
By: Commissioner

Summary

The Human Resources Committee, as its November 2000 meeting, requested an analysis of sickness absence of minority ethnic police officers and civil staff.  This paper gives a preliminary breakdown.  A further report will be provided at the next meeting.

A. Supporting information

1. At its meeting on 16 November 2000, the MPA Human Resources Committee asked for a report on sickness absence identifying the rates for minority ethnic police officers and civil staff.

2. An analysis of sickness absence records for the single month of October 2000 has been carried out. The results are shown on the chart at Appendix 1 for police officers and at Appendix 2 for civil staff.

3. The days shown are calendar days before conversion to working days. The data has been collated from returns received from personnel units. Not all returns have been provided to date and an extrapolation has been provided on the charts to indicate totals for the MPS as a whole. Data has been excluded where no ethnic code is recorded.

4. The overall workforce strengths for police officers and civil staff are provided for reference.

Key points

5. The key points to emerge from the analysis for police officers are:

• minority ethnic officers had, on average, 4 days less sick absence during the month than white officers;
• conversely, as a proportion of strength, virtually twice as many minority ethnic officers had some time off sick during the month;
• therefore, on average, the length of absences of minority ethnic officers was considerably less than for white officers;
• a greater proportion of minority ethnic officers were off for the complete month, possibly indicating a higher level of long term absences.

6. The key points to emerge for civil staff are:

• minority ethnic civil staff had, on average, 0.81 days more sick absence during the month than white civil staff;
• proportionately, a greater number of minority ethnic civil staff were absent sick for some period during the month;
• a greater proportion of minority ethnic civil staff were off for the complete month, possibly indicating a higher level of long term absences.

Further analysis

7. The current management information systems covering sickness data have limited analysis capability. Considerable manual collection and collation of data is required. For this reason it has not been possible to complete two particular pieces of analysis being undertaken:

• periods of sickness absence, and
• long term absences and extended sick leave and pay.

8. These aspects will be reported upon at the next meeting.

B. Recommendation

Members note the report and management information provided.

C. Financial implications

None.

D. Review arrangements

None.

E. Background papers

The following is a statutory list of background papers (under the Local Government Act 1972 S.100 D) which disclose facts or matters on which the report is based and which have been relied upon to a material extent in preparing this report. They are available on request to either the contact officer listed below or to the Clerk to the Police Authority at the address indicated on the agenda.

None.

F. Contact details

The author of this report is Chris Haselden, MPS.

For information contact:

MPA general: 020 7202 0202
Media enquiries: 020 7202 0217/18

Appendix 1: Analysis of sick leave for minority ethnic police officers (for October 2000)

White

Minority Ethnic

Total

Appendix 2: Analysis of sick leave for minority ethnic civil staff (for October 2000)

White

Minority Ethnic

Total

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