Highland Council pledges to crack down on sickies
Council bosses have pledged to clamp down on staff sick leave after workers in the Highlands took more than 65,000 days off in the previous financial year.
The agency and supply teaching staff bill is to be slashed by nearly £700,000 under new plans.
Back-to-work interviews and interventions by occupational therapists are among the tools that will be used to drive the numbers down.
Budget leader Councillor Maxine Smith said the new model was being rolled out to the other services following a successful pilot.
The latest Scottish figures for 2013/14 indicate that Highland Council has the second lowest absence levels out of 32 councils.
Figures for the previous financial year show the authority’s 5,623 staff took on average 9.1 sick days and teachers took on average 5.1 days adding up to a total 65,462 days.
And earlier this month, a Freedom of Information request revealed 118 Highland teachers were off work with stress in 2013/14, against a backdrop of more than 1500 teachers in Scotland.
Councillor Smith, for Cromarty Firth, said the method of using back-to-work interviews and occupational therapists to assess the health and fitness of employees who go on long-term leave had been tried and tested by a council department.
She said: "A new policy has been put in place following on from the good work of Dr Colin Clark, the director of the waste and recycling department.
"He rolled out the model of having return to work interviews and involving an occupational therapist where required. He did good work and it is being copied by the other departments."
The scale of sick pay allowances rises to six months at full pay and six months at half pay after five years service.
A council spokeswoman said there were "no current plans" to alter this agreement.
She said: "Sick pay allowances for all staff are part of national conditions of service so we would need a local collective agreement with the trade unions to amend. There are no plans currently to do so."
The cost-saving plans were approved last week when the council set its budget for 2015-16 and the indicative budget for the following three years.
The largest tranche of the saving - £388,000 - will be taken next year and a working group has already been set up to look into absenteeism.
