Warwickshire County Council is looking at temporarily shifting some sick staff to project work in order to bring down absence rates. 

Performance data considered by a panel of councillors this week showed another rise in the average number of sick days taken by county staff per year.

At the end of September, the figure was 10.38, significantly up from the 8.99 that it was 18 months ago, although executive director for resources Rob Powell said that it "did stabilise in August and started to fall in September" with the help of targeted support and casework. 

He suggested councillors may benefit from the data being "supplemented with a shorter-term measure" that may "give a more immediate sense of trajectory" but it has been on the radar of councillors on the county's resources, fire and rescue overview and scrutiny committee for some time.

A more detailed report on which sectors are affected and the work going in to solve problems is due to be presented at the panel's next meeting in March 2025 and Councillor Tim Sinclair (Con, Stratford North) was keen to make clear exactly what elected members were after.

"I appreciate that very often you are not able to share levels of information because it is sensitive. but it might be helpful to understand whether there are any patterns or trends that would help us to understand the broader dynamic you are facing," he said.

"As a member I have a vague idea but don't definitively know which service areas you are describing when you say there are pockets, I don't have a sense of how many people who might have been off for six months against those who are off for a day, I don't have a sense of any demographic or geographic factors, all of which I would be investigating if I were a manager in a commercial setting and to try to improve it." 

Bal Jacob, Warwickshire County Council's director of workforce and local services, replied: "That is what our intention is. We have to be careful not to illustrate who those individuals are but we will give you a much more detailed report so you get a proper sense of where and what the issues are." 

Councillor Sarah Feeney (Lab, Benn) said past experience suggested that NHS waiting lists can "massively skew sickness data in local government"

"People waiting for operations or psychiatric treatment, for example, are waiting that long," she said. 

"It would be useful to understand what occupational health is doing in terms of reasonable adjustments or recommendations they can make."

Ms Jacob said the council was considering centralising its work on reasonable adjustments rather than leaving it with individual departments "so we have greater control and visibility and (can) be more effective in that space". 

She continued: "I totally get the point about people waiting for procedures.

"I am also thinking about maybe where people are off sick with a condition of some kind and, because of the nature of their work they have to stand or be in the public domain, they can't do that kind of work, what else they may be able to do to come back into the organisation.

"We either have some project work where, assuming they have the right skillset, where we can utilise their skills. We are looking at those options, and again they will be presented in the (March) report."