To be absolutely fed up with NHS staff off sick

[njg616]

I manage a small team and have had several staff take the complete biscuit with sickness.

One took a year off before retirement - we couldn't recruit until she handed in her notice.

One got a similar job while off sick for 6 months, she then went off sick in her new job

Another got the job 'to cover her bills while she recovered from bunion surgery'

Currently I have someone off sick with a history of long and short term sickness. Has been off sick for half the time she's been in her post- 6 months. I follow policy, and refer her to HR who keep giving her more chances.

I find many staff use their NHS salaries while off sick as their sponsorship to do other things in their lives. This cannot be a good use of public funds especially with how things are at the minute.

These staff would not last a minute in the private sector. Sickness records don't seem to matter which to me is a huge indication of a person's commitment and reliability

Some of the examples given in the op sound made up, I think.

Would be interesting to have statistics on organisations with generous sick pay periods v shorter sick pay periods to see what the overall sickness rates are.

Surely if it’s happening to this extent then you as a manager should be considering why you can’t retain staff?

agree

this is all sour grapes

OP I'm with you on this. 25+ years ago my mum (I'm ashamed to say) took two entire Summers off sick before retirement because she wasn't happy she couldn't retire at sixty. Then took the piss over winter with sickness too. People play the system

@Catlover1705 Agree completely and I was a trade union rep for a decade, it left me jaded and cynical. @Hardbackwriter this was actually in higher education, I also had a member get sacked who ran a business from her desk and that was the last straw. She deserved to be sacked, the evidence was all there on her work system. She had done virtually no work for her dept.

she must have had a reason for a sick note @SoupAnyone

You as a manager need to look at it.

I’ve had colleagues pushed to near suicide for the other side of the coin - relying on a couple or one low band staff to run services when they had the budget to hire more.

PROPAGANDA ALERT My sibling works in HR for the NHS. I just read the OP to him and he laughed and said it’s made up.

sounds like you are in the wrong job @njg616

I have first hand experience of the "6 months "sick" before retirement" example. I line managed a colleague who was due to retire and she couldn't believe the number of staff who queried why she was still working when she could "just go off sick". As PP, it's engrained culture. Management can't/won't do anything as they know the person is leaving anyway.

If this post is real and I very much doubt it is, you need to put all your concerns in writing and escalate to senior management, not moan on a random internet forum.

The OP should be managing the situation for their team members.

(I used to offer to remove the bit of salary we paid them for managing if they didn’t want to do it.)

It depends on your HR department and how much you as a manager are prepared to pursue it.

People coming back mysteriously fixed just as their full pay ends happens in every NHS team.

However I've worked with managers who will manage people messing sickness absence out and ones who won't. A lot depended on the personality of the manager.

If you’re managing the team, what are you doing about it? People happy in their work only take sick leave when genuinely ill. If you’re suggesting it’s people taking the piss, what well-being support is in place? People going off sick and looking for jobs during that time is a massive red flag about the manager - I say that as a manager in the nhs. The most my team’s had off sick is 4 days this year - 2 for covid then 3 months later for a chest infection. Is there bullying in the team?

I’ve worked for the NHS for decades and people that take the piss with sick leave are managed out of their role these days. The sick leave rolls over so people can’t take 6 months off, return for a few weeks then go off sick again. Whatever used to happen doesn’t happen now. Don’t get an NHS job thinking you can tack on sick leave to annual leave - you’ll be facing an occupational health medical and dismissal on medical grounds.

I work in the public sector and we can only self certify for 1 week, I’d need a doctors note for anything more. I have a back to work interview and definitely after a certain number of instances it gets taken further.

so presumably these people have a sick note?

i had to go off sick after sick and had to come back on a phased return using my annual leave.
not an easy or fun time.

Is morale shit in your team op? Without outing what else is going on? When we had this was terrible bullying that the managers were too cowardly to sort.

@MaggieNextDoor that’s my experience. To the point that when I was going through consultation and was genuinely unwell with my gp wanting to sign me off, I asked her not to because it would mean the end of my nhs career.

The people who are saying it's made up, clearly havnt worked in a workplace where this is in the culture - I have (non NHS but 6 months fully paid sick) and unfortunately people do very much take the piss in this way. I once overheard one colleague coaching another as to what to say to the GP to get signed off on stress after the colleague had been told off for once again skiving work. I've known multiple people go on sick to avoid doing training they didn't want to do. We had someone who had worked there 10 years and had 3 months off every year over the summer holidays. While frustrating, I would much rather generous sick leave policies were in place - we would have lost some brilliant staff members if we hadn't had that policy.

Anyone who has worked in the NHS for a long time will know that there's a huge problem with sickness. It's been going on forever so wasnt related to covid in the past.

Off the top of my head I can think of several people always off sick at the end of annual leave. Another who frequently claimed to have been sick during annual leave so they could then claim that A/L again. Someone who was sick all summer holidays every year. The huge spike in sickness on Fridays and Mondays, and before/after B/Hs. A person who had 2 part time NHS jobs and was taking time off for physio appointments in each of her jobs - on the same day.

The 'we should just be grateful for NHS staff' ideology infuriates me. We should be striving to improve the service for patients, not excuse people who put immense pressure on their already overworked colleagues.

Bunion surgery is 6 weeks non weight bearing, you get up to use the loo and sit back down, 6 weeks rehab on crutches light duties only. They use internal fixation these days but if you do too much too soon it can fail to heal and because the bones have been shortened during surgery there’s no bone left for revision surgery.

I can well believe staff take advantage, a lot of them hold grudges against the nhs or being in healthcare wasn’t what they wanted as kids and they were pushed into it. 3/12 on my course were there due to parental pressure. We have in-laws who are drs, they were told as kids they were doing medicine and that was that.

I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt because any time I’ve been off sick (which has been no more than a week at a time), I have been bored out of my skull. I imagine that completely fabricated illness to get months off to sit at home is very rare indeed.

I work somewhere with a six month sickness policy. However, that sounds generous but within a month (four weeks) you are on informal monitoring, within another two weeks you are in a meeting with the Union rep next to you and before long they are asking you about cutting down your hours, going part-time or taking voluntary retirement!

They don't leave you to have a few months off in a relaxing manner. It is extremely stressful, the most you could have off is three weeks once without attracting HR attention, and in my place, this is not a good thing. People with chronic illnesses or psychological problems are often managed out.

Your HR processes are obviously not as robustly applied as ours. By having time off sick, they interpret this as not being fit to do the job, unless it's a time-dependent surgery/limited illness, and proceed in a very aggressive way after that.