Warwickshire councillors ask for more information on how council is supporting staff amid rising sickness levels

Recently published performance data shows that council staff missed a total of 15,001 days of work due to stress and mental health issues alone in the year 2023-24.

The tally accounts for 35 per cent of the total of staff absences, a proportion that is up from 28 per cent in the previous year.

It is the cause given for 40 per cent of the absent days in the children and young people and social care and health directorates – the departments that are faced with heightening demand pressures.

The overall performance measure shows that absence rates are creeping up.

The average number of sick days for a full-time equivalent council employee is now 9.86 per year, above a target of eight which has a tolerance of one either way. That figure was 9.16 in September 2023 and 8.99 a year ago.

In this week’s meeting of the council’s resources and fire and rescue overview and scrutiny committee, a panel of councillors that assesses and makes recommendations on work in these areas, Councillor Tim Sinclair (Con, Stratford North) placed emphasis on the support available to staff members.

“The conversations we have had here previously have all been around the average, and that there are some service areas where the sickness levels are very high,” he said.

“It has been explained to us before why there are pressures on certain individuals. My question relates to how those individuals are getting on, whether those pressures are increasing in those particularly concerning areas, what the story is there.”

Bal Jacob, Warwickshire County Council’s director of workforce and local services, replied: “We recognise that sickness has increased.

"There is greater visibility in the organisation because our dashboards are now available to all our managers so they can understand the data and what is going on.

“We have been quite proactive in the areas where we know there is more of an increase, we are supporting managers and we are doing a lot more awareness sessions particularly around mental health and wellbeing.

“We understand where the challenges are, the areas we need to operate more effectively in, supporting those areas, and we have that in place.

“Our trend isn’t different to any national trends at the moment, we are not an outlier in that sense, but we are doing whatever we can to try to reduce our levels.”

Cllr Sinclair then added: “By the sound of it there is a lot of work going into helping people. There may be value in this committee having a deeper understanding of what is being done so we look after them.”

It was later agreed that a briefing note should be produced for the panel to look at more of the specifics, highlight problem areas and which measures are being undertaken to arrest the slide as well as providing an understanding of the current position in relation to historic trends.