Attendance issues are familiar to those of us who have managerial responsibilities or who work with individuals who are struggling in their employment situation, in organizations of all kinds. It is plain that there are no easy or universal solutions to creating and maintaining a workforce which is regularly present and productive.
Alongside best practice [...]
Make an appointment with your doctor and tell him / her what is happening to you at work.
Follow medical instructions and get signed off if necessary.
If counselling is available at work make an early appointment to talk through your experience.
If no workplace counselling is available then check to see if your medical practice has a [...]
New research has been published revealing what managers need to do to prevent and reduce stress in those they manage. In interviews with nearly 400 employees and managers, and focus groups with over 50 HR professionals, participants were asked for their views on what manager behaviours are important for preventing and reducing stress at [...]
There’s no doubt that absence remains one of the biggest priorities and most difficult problems to overcome for UK organisations. This I believe is not down to a lack of comprehensive workplace sickness policy but perhaps the application and implementation of the policy, by line managers.
CIPD research has consistently highlighted the importance of line managers taking responsibility for managing absence and argues that the formality of conducting a return to work interview will help to drive home the seriousness with which the company views short term absence.
In some sectors sick pay days are considered just another perk of the job that should be taken so they are not wasted. However in most retail businesses, mine included, rights to sick pay is not an entitlement but only made at the managers discretion. So it remains a mystery why a number of employees have to throw a ‘sickie’ as they know they will not get paid. Minor illnesses such as colds and headaches continue to be the biggest cause of short term absence within the business.
As a company that employs a high percentage of young workers such as students on a part-time basis, one can only assume it is a lack of commitment to the job.
I am a counsellor trained in person centred therapy. In 2003 whilst working in consultancy, I developed an outreach therapeutic model of working with substance misusing clients within the NHS. The client group was women who had withdrawn from using “treatment” services to support their drug and alcohol use, therefore were considered dis-engaging drug users.
These were chaotic women with a range of associated disturbances such as eating difficulties, deliberate self harming, often sex working, and many balancing social service and or criminal justice involvement. Hospital and G.P data informed us that these women existed, but how could we reach them and work with them positively?
Based strongly in Person Centred Psychology the components of my model gave the mental health professionals a radical alternative to working with clients and patients with mental health and dual diagnosis labels. The model acted as a platform for women’s experiences to be heard and used in furthering treatment plans and pathways. It was an individual way of working, but by experiential encounters and training professionals who also worked in differing capacities with these individuals, supported referrals and appointments could take place ensuring reaching the individual at ‘root cause’, by this I mean locating clients where they are in their locality, e.g. local day centers, drug services, hospitals, children’s and mother and toddler groups, seeing them locally and offering outreach counselling. Empowering clients to work on their own terms allowed them to process and speak about their experiences. It therefore aided re engagement of treatment and services.
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