Healthy people, healthy workplace

X

We're serious about absenteeism. We treat it as a symptom, not a cause, as a barometer of the health, fitness and wellbeing of our organisation.

We're committed to lowering our absenteeism rate -  ie the rate of unplanned absences - to an average of 3 days off per person per year.

We believe that fit and healthy people working in jobs they love doing don't take days off.

We believe that high levels of absenteeism can be reflective of a stress problem of some sort - relating to physical health, mental health, and family, life and career dis-satisfaction and burn-out.

We believe they are also reflective of a dysfunctional work culture which is either individual generated, management generated or both.

It has a cause and it can be fixed.

Our occupational health, fitness and wellbeing program is critical to our desire to maintain low rates of absenteeism.

If people are unhealthy we want to help them become fitter and healthier.

If people don't like their jobs, we want to help them to move somewhere else.

If they're burnt out, we want to reduce the pressure.

If people are being poorly managed we want to improve the management skills of our managers.

If morale is low, we want to improve morale.

When absenteeism is low its a good reflection on our staff groups and their managers. It is a key performance indicator.

Managers are held to account for this section of their budget with the cost of days absent being recorded.