Edinburgh City Council staff sick days cost public £22.8m

The city council lost 171,000 working days in 2018 due to staff absence  – equating to 760 full time posts and a notional cost of £22.8m to taxpayers.

Staff sick days are costing Edinburgh City Council more than 22m. Pic: PuiPhotoman-Shutterstock

The council’s finance and resources committee quizzed officials about the workforce control annual report – which shows that over the last two years, 343,000 days have been lost due to staff absence.

Around 67.5 per cent of all working days lost to absence were from long-term absence and the remaining 32.5 per cent were linked to short-term absence.

Stress, depression, and mental ill-health accounted for 35 per cent of long-term absences while musculo-skeletal issues made up 15 per cent. Other long-term absence causes included back and neck problems, cancer and hospitalisation.

The council’s human resources manager, Katy Miller, said that stress had been partly caused by a transformation policy, which has resulted in hundreds of staff members taking redundancy and remaining workers being stretched.

Ms Miller said: “The number one reason for long-term absence still remains stress, depression and mental fatigue. Yes that is a result, partially, of transformation. Inevitably, change brings about a reaction like that.

“You would expect to see an increase in overtime and agency to cover those positions. It’s a sense of a whirlwind where if you have high levels of absentees, and you are not covering by agency or overtime, colleagues are covering for those absentees and you get into a little bit of a circle.”

Conservative finance spokesperson, Cllr Graham Hutchison, labelled the council’s transformation as “entirely botched” and said the report laid out some “very stark” figures.

He added: “This council has gone through a very painful transformation in recent years. In a lot of ways we are still suffering from that. When you look at the reports and the stress management policy, a lot of the issues stem from the transformation process that this council has gone through.

“Obviously, if other employees are having to cover for colleageus’ absences and holidays, that’s adding to their stress levels, potentially adding to overtime costs. At the same time, if you are bringing in agency staff, they are going to need training up on the roles so there’s an added stress there.”

Benchmarking statistics, collected one years in arrears, shows that the council is above average for sick absence for non-teaching staff – 12.34 days lost compared to the Scottish local authority average of 11.41 days. For teaching staff, the city council has an average of 5.67 days – compared to the average of 5.93 days.

The council said that a range of measures were in place to try and reduce the number of days lost through absence.

Cllr Alasdair Rankin, finance and resources convener, said: “Working in the public sector can be really fulfilling but we are acutely aware that it can also be very challenging when our staff have to deal with highly emotive or sensitive issues on behalf of the public, or as a consequence of necessary organisational change.

“The number of days lost each month due to ill health was slightly lower than it was in 2017, which is encouraging, but we are committed to better supporting the emotional, mental, physical and financial well-being of our employees and we have comprehensive support in place to help achieve this.

"This includes an occupational health service, access to an around the clock counselling service, wellbeing workshops and we are due to roll out mental health awareness training for our line managers."