NHS Staff Sickness

[Countdown]

CHLEMCBC said:

Countdown said:

Your post isn't clear but (AIUI) sick notes are usually given for 4 weeks max so I'm not sure how anybody could predict his future sickness.

My doctor signed me off for 10 weeks a couple of years ago with stress. He would happily have given me longer if I had wanted it. Ex-army doctor locum for one of our practice GPs who recognised immediately what I was going through.

Fair enough. At our place, regardless of how long you were signed off for, you'd be expected to have regular catch-ups with your Manager and/or HR. Depending on the nature/cause of the sickness you'd also be required to engage with people such as Occ Health.

[CHLEMCBC]

Countdown said:

CHLEMCBC said:

Countdown said:

Your post isn't clear but (AIUI) sick notes are usually given for 4 weeks max so I'm not sure how anybody could predict his future sickness.

My doctor signed me off for 10 weeks a couple of years ago with stress. He would happily have given me longer if I had wanted it. Ex-army doctor locum for one of our practice GPs who recognised immediately what I was going through.

Fair enough. At our place, regardless of how long you were signed off for, you'd be expected to have regular catch-ups with your Manager and/or HR. Depending on the nature/cause of the sickness you'd also be required to engage with people such as Occ Health.

Nothing in the post you commented on said that didn't happen, only that he's signed off for 6 months. We also have regular catch ups. As our managers are not trained mental health professionals and it's against policy to try to bully staff into coming back, they consisted of :

"how are you?"
"much the same, but OK."
"anything else we can do for you?"
"not really"
"OK, talk to you next week, then".

Our occupational health team at the time was shockingly poor, so no contact was made. The same team which called me to ask when my shoulder surgery was...the day after I had the op!

[ChevronB19]

CoolHands said:

Absolutely agree and I’m not suggesting that at all although it does read like that. I guess I’m making 2 points, neither clearly - one is that long periods of sickness affect the average so the number of sick days discussed sounds worse than it is for the ‘average worker’ or whatever term the media is using; and second that there are some laggards(!) that will be taking the piss and as above it affects the stats quite severely.

So yes I wrote my comment rather thoughtlessly

Thanks and appreciated!

[hidetheelephants]

asfault said:

CHLEMCBC said:

Mikebentley said:

When I was a Senior Prison Officer I was in charge of treatment programmes for substance abusers. My Governor told me that there was a £100k grant that needed to be spent on remodelling a 40’ by 40’ courtyard on the drug treatment detox wing. This was effectively their outside exercise space. The money was from something daft like the Kings Fund.

I was tasked with locating and having installed seating and some landscaping, maybe a water feature etc. after looking around I discovered that companies were charging about £1500 for plastic pub bench tables. I called one up and was told if I purchased 6 it would be 50% off.

Well the meeting happened with all the stakeholders and senior managers and I was asked to present my proposal and costings. There was no way I could spend £100k and it was coming in at £15k. My proposed savings were shown and I was advised that by asking for a discount I was now at risk of accusations of some sort of “ brown envelope” situation. They also said if we didn’t spend the £100k we wouldn’t get it next year.

After that I told them to keep me out of it and went back to my day job.I think perhaps people should be incentivised to identify savings and rewarded accordingly. It does though show waste can happen when people are spending money that is not seen as their own.

It was a grant. Who were you saving money?

The tax payer

The Kings Fund is a charity. If there was £100k to spend on landscaping it's easy enough to do so, mature trees can be £10k+.

[CHLEMCBC]

asfault said:

CHLEMCBC said:

Mikebentley said:

When I was a Senior Prison Officer I was in charge of treatment programmes for substance abusers. My Governor told me that there was a £100k grant that needed to be spent on remodelling a 40’ by 40’ courtyard on the drug treatment detox wing. This was effectively their outside exercise space. The money was from something daft like the Kings Fund.

I was tasked with locating and having installed seating and some landscaping, maybe a water feature etc. after looking around I discovered that companies were charging about £1500 for plastic pub bench tables. I called one up and was told if I purchased 6 it would be 50% off.

Well the meeting happened with all the stakeholders and senior managers and I was asked to present my proposal and costings. There was no way I could spend £100k and it was coming in at £15k. My proposed savings were shown and I was advised that by asking for a discount I was now at risk of accusations of some sort of “ brown envelope” situation. They also said if we didn’t spend the £100k we wouldn’t get it next year.

After that I told them to keep me out of it and went back to my day job.I think perhaps people should be incentivised to identify savings and rewarded accordingly. It does though show waste can happen when people are spending money that is not seen as their own.

It was a grant. Who were you saving money?

The tax payer

No. You weren't.