UK Government to tackle sickness absence abuse via new Health and Work Service

As part of an ongoing effort to reduce sickness-related absenteeism and tackle sickness absence abuse, the UK Government has decided to create a new scheme designed to get people back into work faster.

Figures released by the government suggest that close to 1 million employees on average were on sick leave for a least one month between October 2010 and September 2013, with employers facing a yearly bill of around £9billion for sick pay and associated costs, a media news report has revealed.

Government authorities believe that the future Health and Work Service, set to be launched in Scotland, England and Wales in the near future, will save employers £70million a year and cut the time people spend off work by 20 per cent to 40 per cent. The scheme will be funded by eliminating a compensation scheme for businesses paying long-term sick pay to their employees.

Workers will be referred for health assessments if they are sick for more than four weeks will be carried out by occupational specialists to draw up a plan and timetable to get the patient back to work quickly.

Employees will be referred by a GP or their employer but the assessments are not compulsory. As part of the assessment, employees will be given a plan including a timetable for returning to work, fitness for work advice and signposted to appropriate help.

Managing sickness-related absences across organizations of any sizes is becoming an increasingly serious matter of concern. However, Tensor plc has just the right solution for the job, since our flagship WinTA.NET integrated workforce management solution incorporates a dedicated Absence Planning and Entitlement Management feature.

Our comprehensive, yet user-friendly software comes pre-loaded with graphical calendar charts that provide a colourful way of viewing an individual's or a department's absence records.

Each employee can be allocated different entitlements for absence such as annual leave or allowed sickness. As absence is booked and taken, the remainder available for each entitlement is updated. Entitlement formulae are used to calculate more complex entitlements calculated on a rising scale based upon length of service.

WinTA.NET supplies the relevant managers with information on employee's absences through warning email notifications or via hardcopy reports. After that, the system would rapidly identify missing employees that are expected to be at work and then informs you via automatic email reporting reports distributed by email.

If you'd like to find out more about the Tensor workforce management solutions, just contact our team or Book a Demo, we'll be more than happy to answer all of your questions and queries.