Sickness absences within Tayside Contracts is costing the organisation more than £1m a year – as a new report reveals days lost due to ill health has reached a five-year high.
A report complied by managing director Keith McNamara has revealed the direct cost of sickness absence to the organisation in 2022/23 was £1,152,302.
This is an increase of £49,991 when compared to the previous financial year.
Almost half of all sickness absences were stress-related.
Tayside Contracts is a local authority contracting organisation providing catering, cleaning, roads maintenance, vehicle maintenance and winter maintenance.
It is the commercial trading arm of the Dundee, Angus, and Perth and Kinross councils and employs around 2,500 people.
Organisation failing to achieve a key target
The report, which went before Tayside Contract’s joint committee last week, detailed that in the period between April 2022 and March 2023, the percentage of working days lost due to sickness was 6.4%.
This, Mr McNamara writes, results in the the organisation failing to achieve a key target in their business plan.
It’s also an increase of 0.5% compared to 2021/2022 – when it was 5.9% – and the highest since 2019/20 when 6.2% of organisational days were lost.
The main reasons for staff absences last year was stress; with stress, work-related stress and depression now accounting for 43% of the total days lost through sickness absence.
The report also shows that less than a fifth of Tayside Contract’s total workforce achieved full attendance in the 2022/23 financial year – a reduction on the previous 12-month period.
Strategies in place to combat absences
To address the sickness related absences, Mr McNamara said Tayside Contracts have implemented various strategies to improve employee wellbeing.
He wrote: “Several initiatives have been identified as part of Tayside Contracts wellbeing strategy and action plan which aims to promote and encourage good physical and mental health as well as providing support mechanisms to help deal with physical and mental health problems.
“Managers within Tayside Contracts continue to utilise the work-related stress policy
and associated risk assessment and action plan templates to identify, address and ideally prevent stress-related absences.”
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