1. Introduction
BrisDoc recognises its responsibilities in promoting the good health of its staff and that doing so is likely to lead to a workforce who will be more productive and committed to providing excellent patient care. BrisDoc also recognises that on occasions a member of staff may feel unwell or suffer from a serious health condition which may prevent them from being able to fulfil their duties or attend their work. BrisDoc therefore aims to offer support throughout these periods, treating people appropriately and with sensitivity in a fair and consistent manner.
BrisDoc is committed to:
- The provision of high-quality service to patients by ensuring absence does not disrupt patient care.
- Ensuring that all parties work together to facilitate a return to work as soon as possible following a period of sickness absence.
- Ensuring in all cases of employee ill-health, there will be a progressive and thorough review of the employee’s circumstances, taking into account the need to maintain a service to the public, support to individuals and to comply with all employment and equality legislation.
- Having a proactive, consistent and fair approach to managing sickness absence and managing absence with and without an underlying health condition in a sensitive and fair way, with no bias or discrimination.
- Recognising our responsibility to meet all out legal obligations for managing staff with underlying health issues in line with the Equality Act 2010.
- Facilitating full and proper consideration of any reasonable adjustments that will enable an employee to attend regularly and/or return to work.
- Maintaining the target of no more than 3% lost time due to sickness.
Although we recognise that there will always be a level of sickness absence, high levels of absence have a detrimental effect on the level and quality of service provision, placing an additional burden on colleagues at work and often resulting in increased costs through the use of additional staff and overtime. We therefore aim to balance sickness absence with minimising disruption at the work place through adopting a fair monitoring and review system that will also contribute to creating a healthy workplace. We recognise that members of staff have a responsibility to ensure regular attendance at work and also will need to feel secure and supported when absent through sickness. Managers must deal with sickness absence in a clear, fair and consistent manner balancing the needs of staff and the service and taking into account the individual circumstances of each case. We recognise the importance of managing sickness in a supportive way, using all possible opportunities to retain staff with underlying health problems, so that staff with key skills and knowledge are retained in the service.
We are focused on improving health for the patients we serve and our own members of staff. We recognise our responsibility to pro-actively manage sickness so that absenteeism is minimised and a healthy workforce is achieved. We believe this will be best for our staff, patient care and the cost of our service. Whilst the policy aims to ensure that every effort is made to support, wherever possible, the return to good health and the resumption of work, there will be occasions where this proves impossible, and when the termination of employment owing to ill health remains the only practicable course of action.