MPS sickness

Report: 5
Date: 6 September 2001
By: Commissioner

Summary

This report provides the current MPS sickness position and outlines proactive measures that Occupational Health are taking to support the organisation in managing sickness absence

A. Recommendations

1. that Committee Members note the contents of this interim report and indicate any additional areas for further examination; and
2. that Committee Members note that a further report will be provided for the next meeting.

B. Supporting information

Background information

1. Report 7 to the Human Resources Committee on 19 April 2001 gave a progress report on traffic warden sickness.

2. Personnel Management Information Report details our performance against the 2001/2 Policing and Performance Plan sickness objectives. For ease of reference, the latest sickness data to the end of June 2001 is shown at appendix 1.

Targeted approach using PIB statistics

3. Appendix 2 shows the breakdown of sickness absences by Borough/business group for police officers, civil staff and traffic wardens. The graphs also indicate the corporate average figure and the target. This breakdown and further data that is currently being analysed raises many issues:

• Is the problem related to long term (over 28 days) or short term sickness? Early indications show that police officers have greater short term sickness, conversely civil staff and traffic wardens have greater long term sickness.
• Is there a disparity between differing roles at the same location?
• Is there commonality in the same roles at different locations?
• Do the locations with low sickness rates operate different local practices to managing sickness to those with high sickness rates?
• Do the managers with high long term sickness refer cases to Occupational Health (OH) at an early stage? A comparison will be carried out with the OH referral data.
• Is there a disparity between sickness levels of males and females, and if so, does this relate to particular roles or locations? It has been considered for sometime that sickness for females may be higher than that for males and the reasons for that are diverse. This issue is being investigated. The underlying reasons for absence may overlap into the area of worklife balance and flexible working patterns.

4. These issues and any others that Members feel appropriate will be explored in a further paper for the next meeting.

Occupational health proactive initiatives available for all staff

5. Whilst further analysis is carried out on the statistics, OH has carried out its own analysis on referral information to target our approach to sickness absence. Although this will not reach the heart of the problems, it shows the reasons people are being referred to OH.

6. The analysis at appendix 3 shows the number of new referrals to OH from January 2001 to June 2001, broken down by the reasons for referral. The analysis clearly shows that the two main reasons for referral are musculoskeletal injuries and mental health disorders.

Musculoskeletal injuries

7. Building on this information OH has developed the spend to save initiative to ensure those individuals needing a consultant’s appointment or a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan to determine their prognosis receive a speedier service than that provided by the National Health Service (NHS). The normal waiting time for an MRI scan on the NHS is approximately 6 months: the OH scheme aims to reduce that wait to 10 days. We have extended the spend to save initiative to include minor surgical interventions which would have a minimum of 6 months wait in the NHS.

8. Working hand in hand with this is our rehabilitation service including physiotherapy and rehabilitation therapy. This is available to all MPS employees. This ensures speedy treatment to support an individual’s return to work as soon as possible. For the month of June 2001, 45% of those referred for rehabilitation were seen within 10 days; 100% were seen within 30 days. This compares with an average waiting time of 3 months in the NHS for an initial appointment.

9. This combination of effort has begun to take effect as the number of musculoskeletal referrals has been decreasing since April 2001, as indicated by the graph at appendix 4.

10. OH holds regular recuperative clinics with personnel managers from every Borough and business group to monitor those individuals on recuperative duties. The aim is to return individuals to full duties as quickly as possible, but with the need to ensure that it is safe to do so.

Mental health disorders (psychiatric)

11. In response to the high number of psychiatric referrals, we have introduced a pilot psychological project. It aims for any individual that reports sick with a stress related illness to be seen by a consultant psychiatrist within 6 weeks of their first day of sickness. They are diagnosed and treated, either by the psychiatrist or psychologist, where possible in conjunction with their GP, with the aim of returning them to work safely as soon as possible.

12. Working in tandem with the psychological pilot is our trauma support service. This provides an immediate response to those individuals who have had to deal with traumatic incidents at work, thus encouraging them to talk about the experiences they faced and hopefully preventing any long term psychological damage that may keep them away from the workplace.

13. The psychological pilot is also part of an overall strategy for dealing with stress. Although the pilot specifically targets the symptoms of stress, our aim within the strategy is to look at the underlying causes of stress. Other projects that fall within the stress strategy are the return to driving project and the family liaison officer support work. The strategy is still in the developmental stage, but shortly a stress audit process will take place involving 3,000-5,000 questionnaires and a series of focus groups. It is anticipated that a comprehensive business case detailing the way forward with this strategy will be placed before Management Board at the end of October 2001.

Traffic wardens - sickness absence data irregularities

14. It is acknowledged that a particular area of concern is the high level of sickness absence for traffic wardens and an issue arose recently in respect of a disparity between statistics.

15. There are differences between the data provided by the Traffic Warden OCU and that provided by Personnel Department. Traffic Warden Managers based at each unit send a sickness return to Performance Information Bureau (PIB) and to the local personnel unit showing individual sickness figures. To obtain data the local sickness clerk runs a ‘GQL Query’ within the personnel information management system.

16. This information is recorded in terms of calendar days. Appendix 5 shows sickness levels on a rolling twelve-month period in calendar days.

17. The sickness data provided by PIB and circulated by Personnel Department in the form of the Personnel Management Information Report is adjusted to show working days. To produce this figure an approximation of 5/7 of the calendar days total is calculated. This accounts for the disparity between the figures produced by the Traffic Warden OCU and Personnel Department.

Tackling sickness absence initiatives - traffic wardens

18. OH and the traffic warden service are actively managing sickness absence.

19. An individual action plan has been established for each traffic warden on recuperative duties or long term sick. These action plans are reviewed jointly on a monthly basis by Occupational Health, the individual’s line manager and personnel manager, to ensure progress is being made.

20. 20 cases were found that fell within the terms of the Disability Discrimination Act. These individuals have been interviewed with a view to transferring to an administrative post.

21. These initiatives specifically aimed at traffic wardens have had an impact as the average number of sickness days based on calendar days per traffic warden appendix 5 has been reduced from 31 days to 22 days.

Further analysis

22. Further analysis is being undertaken, particularly in relation to the issues raised at paragraph 3. This work will be subject of a further report to the Committee at its next meeting in November.

C. Financial implications

There are no direct financial implications arising directly from this report.

D. Background papers

• MPA Paper No. 7 dated 19 April 2001 & Personnel Monthly Management Information Report - July 2001

E. Contact details

Report author: Linda Van den Hende, Occupational Health Business Director, MPS.

For information contact:

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

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