Simon Stephen’s recent announcement at the NHS Innovation Expo on 2nd September confirms that the cost of sickness absence among NHS staff has continued to rise and is estimated by Public Health England to be around £2.4bn a year or one pound from every forty of the total budget!
Simon Stephen’s recent announcement at the NHS Innovation Expo on 2nd September confirms that the cost of sickness absence among NHS staff has continued to rise and is estimated by Public Health England to be around £2.4bn a year or one pound from every forty of the total budget!
This figure is before the cost of agency costs, and also before the cost of other things such as their own care costs.
This is a hugely important as aside from the eye watering costs, the formal research I lead in 2009 confirmed clearly the association between staff ill health and reduced quality of care, poorer patient satisfaction and the ability to meet key regulator targets.
Past experience with Royal Mail has helped me understand that small changes in attendance can impact significantly on service business performance – threatening service continuity and quality. Short term absence is particularly difficult as it is often unplanned and managers have to find cover at short notice.
In their work for BIS, David Macleod and Nita Clarke highlighted the importance of employee engagement to business competitive success, they also concluded that Health and wellbeing was “inextricably linked” to good engagement.
Simon Stephen’s announcement offers three pillars to improve staff health in the NHS; the first being the piloting of 10 vanguard organisations plus NHS England itself pro-actively promoting staff wellbeing. Trusts involved will be encouraged to offer health checks to staff, promote activities to improve health and lifestyle, provide early interventions to staff becoming sick (eg physiotherapy or mental health support) and will also ensure a senior leader is made accountable for the programmes.
A second pillar seeks to provide support to GPs and their staff – highlighting that stress and burnout are important to tackle and GPs often have poor access to good occupational health support.
The third pillar focuses on staff nutrition and challenges NHS units to ensure staff have access whatever their shifts to healthy options and are aware of the benefits.
In 2009 my review team highlighted that 45,000 NHS staff in England were sick each day, the figure remains far too high and I still believe significant improvement – which is feasible and has been demonstrated in some NHS units, will help to deliver the additional capacity to support the innovation and change needed.
Simon Stephens highlighted the need in the NHS Five Year Forward view for NHS staff to become ambassadors for health, I agree with his view and suggested in 2009 that staying as “cobblers children” was not the right position for NHS staff to be in!
