Managing Attendance

Absence can be related to all of us, whether it’s an illness, a medical appointment or time off from work for personal reasons. To provide consistency for colleagues and managers on how we manage absences across the Society, we have now updated the Managing Attendance policy for all colleagues to become familiar with.

This can be accessed here.

Why has it been updated?

In the Society, there were over 14,000 separate spells of sickness absences last year which equates to around 4.7% of all hours processed. Therefore the Society wants to focus on supporting colleagues with their attendance at work, including helping managers to be proactive by instigating support as early as possible to assist in colleagues from hitting absence triggers points in the future.

For example, making reasonable adjustments to a colleague’s role, referrals to Occupational Health to gain further advice and guidance on how best to support colleagues and signposting colleagues to resources they may find useful. These can include:

• Grocery Aid

• Everymind at work app

• Health guides located on the Health and Wellbeing page of Colleague Connect here

Also, for colleagues in Food Retail, we’ll be removing the 3 sickness waiting days from 1st Feb 2022.

How can colleagues support?

Whilst line managers have a responsibility to assist colleagues with their health and wellbeing it’s also important that colleagues support themselves and engage regularly with their manager where they have any concerns that may impact their performance or attendance at work.

Colleagues should also take the time to read and become familiar with the updated policy on Colleagues Connect. This can be accessed here.

What has the Society been doing already?

HR Advisors have been delivering training sessions on the new policy to managers to ensure clarity on the policy and process moving forward so that they are equipped to support their teams appropriately.