Sickness and Work

Sickness Absence Management

Sickness absence OccuMed CLINIC can help you reduce the disruption, loss of productivity and general management time wasted dealing with sickness absence issues. We can help to facilitate the much faster return-to-work of your employees after a spell of sickness absence than otherwise would be the case if things were left to run their own course. The early intervention of one of our highly experience Occupational Health professionals, be it an Occupational Health Advisor or an Occupational Health Physician, can produce rapid results.

• Advice to employees on what they should be asking their own GP.
• Helping engage other appropriate GP services.
• Identification of real cause of the sickness absence so the route cause can be tackled (stress at work, a bad DSE set-up, manual handling issues, etc...)
• Suggest onward private consultation to other health professionals such as a physiotherapist or counsellor.
• Identify what reasonable adjustments can be made at work to allow the person to return in some capacity.
• Co-ordinating the employee rehabilitation programme.
• Devising and monitoring a return-to-work programme, phased return or similar. Any of these directions will help tackle the absence and get the employee back quickly and safely.

• Identify that this employee will not be returning in the medium term (or at all) or when they return they will need to be reassigned or some similar variation.
• Give some idea on the timeframe for the particular case.
• Give Management & HR some insight of the health issue and the prognosis.
• Can identify those cases appropriate for ill-health retirement or similar.

With this knowledge you can then engage with the employee and offer support in an appropriate manner, plan ahead with some confidence and not be wondering what is going to happen every time a sick note is produced.

We offer a full range of sickness absence services from telephone consultations and one-off referrals through to regular on-site consultations, case management and sickness absence policy development.

So contact us today to see how we can help you.

Cost of Sickness Absence

Sickness cost of Absence from work cost the UK economy £13.2 billion as the average employee took almost seven (6.7) days off sick (source CBI, 2008 survey). The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (source CIPD's 2009 Absence Management survey) estimate that sickness absence costs £666 per employee per year and averaged 6.4 days per employee; giving an average cost of just over £100/day

At just £100/day this estimate probably under estimates all the extra unquantifiable costs such as Management time, loss of productivity, increased overtime or contractor levels, etc….

Even at this low estimate of £100/day, a quick calculation will show how the cost of absence can soon spirals upward.If we take the above figures and assume a company of 100 people then the cost at:

• 3% absence = 100 people x 8 days x £100/day = £80k per annum
• 4% absence = 100 people x 10 days x £100/day = £100k per annum
• 5% absence = 100 people x 13 days x £100/day = £130k per annum
• 6% absence = 100 people x 16 days x £100/day = £160k per annum

With higher than average absence levels the financial justification for investing in an OH service is straightforward. In the above example, if you could reduce absence by just 1% then this would generate an annual saving of circa £20k. This saving would more than pay for OccuMed's services!

It is recognised within the medical profession and beyond, that early assessment, diagnosis and medical intervention aids early return-to-work! So if you are going to do something do it now, not in two or three months time!

OccuMed Occupational Health is experienced in all aspects of Sickness Absence Management and we can help. Working together we can get your employees back to work quickly, productively and safely.

Contact OccuMed today and start saving money.