This is an indicator included within the Local Government Benchmarking Framework (LGBF)
The Benchmark Target is the average of Dundee City Council's family group of similar local authorities.
Find out more about the LGBF here: Benchmarking | Benchmarking (improvementservice.org.uk)
Dundee City Council’s sickness absence has increased over the last year. Dundee City Council continue to work collaboratively with the Trade Unions on the Health and Wellbeing agenda. Supports such as the Council’s health and wellbeing service, providing training courses to equip managers with the knowledge, understanding and flexibility to deal with absences, as well as providing family/friendly policy which provide a good work/life balance for employees have unfortunately not resulted in a reduction in absence.
HR understand the importance of data analytics surrounding absence, and in 2022 introduced an interactive absence dashboard for services to allow managers to analyse various aspects of their absence to identify trends and areas of high levels of absence. HR will use this data to work collaboratively with services to support managers to reduce absence in their service, and in turn reduce absence overall in the council.
Moving forward, HR in collaboration with services will concentrate efforts in supporting employees with Health and Wellbeing as reflected in the following actions planned:
- Early intervention of Occupational Health Services
- Rebranding of the Employee Wellbeing Support Service
- Introduction of Wellbeing Ambassadors
- Reviewing existing and developing policies to help work life balance and mental health and wellbeing
- Continue training for managers on Promoting Health and Attendance, and creating a mentally healthy workforce
- Assist services in using the newly developed absence dashboard to use the information to identify where there are areas needing support.
All these measures will be monitored with an expectation that, together with the ongoing collaborate work between HR, services and Trade Unions.
More general information may be obtained on the Corporate Services area of this website.