Guidance on Changes to Sickness Recording and Monitoring in myTeam

1. Why record all sickness absences?

• To ensure that issues do not go unnoticed or unsupported, facilitating prompt and often simple steps to respond to employee needs, before they become much more complex to address.
• To prompt and inform conversations with employees that will support the early identification of any intervention that may assist an employee in addressing any issues, which in turn may mitigate the impact of such absences on the work of the department and other colleagues, e.g. via reasonable adjustments, development of return to work plans etc.
• To ensure that any risks are identified and addressed promptly and disability issues are supported appropriately.

2. What changes have been introduced within myTeam and why?

a) New Reason for Sickness Codes

The reason codes for sickness have been split into two categories: Mental and Physical Health and simplified from 26 to 11 codes. These being:

Mental Health:

• Stress [This is a symptom (not a condition) where a person perceives that they do not have the ability to cope with identified stressors
• Depression [This is a mental health condition sometimes described as mild, moderate or severe]
• Other (mandatory free text field)

Physical Health:

• Injury/accident (mandatory free text field)
• Pregnancy related
• Back related
• Influenza
• Cold/ENT (Ear, Nose, Throat)
• Diarrhoea/Vomiting
• Upper Limb Disorder (drop down box with options: wrist, arm, neck)
• Other (mandatory free text field)

These changes will support the effective management of individual ill health issues, by enabling more specific detail to be recorded via the free text fields, whilst the simplified coding focuses on a number of specific areas to enable us to more effectively meet our duty of care towards our staff.

b) Additional Fields

• Date of a Return to Work (RTW) Interview (this should be completed in all cases where a ‘potential cause for concern’ was identified – see section 3a below)
• A flag to record if ‘Further Action’ was identified as required following a RTW interview. Depending upon the circumstances of each individual case a manager may find it appropriate to implement one or more actions to respond effectively to the situation. For example: in some cases it may be appropriate to establish review periods, refer to the Staff Occupational Health Service, consider training needs etc. However, any specific detail regarding follow up action should be recorded outside of myTeam.
• End date of a fit note

These fields have been added to better support departments to monitor the timeliness of Return to Work Interviews particularly where a potential cause for concern has been identified, as well as the employee’s compliance with the certification requirements of the procedure.

c) Introduction of Flags

Two flags have been introduced to enable employees to identify whether they perceive that their absence is due to or aggravated by either a work or disability related issue. It will be for the employee to identify and advise if this be the case, either when initially reporting the absence or on their return to work e.g. via a RTW discussion, and the flag should only be used with the employees agreement.

The use of a work related flag will enable the identification of areas where prompt proactive intervention may be appropriate. (Where sickness absence is reported to someone other than the individual’s manager, if the employee identifies that they perceived their absence is attributable to either a disability or work related issues, this should be promptly notified to the employee’s manager, with the employee's agreement).

The use of a disability related flag may support early disclosure of a potential disability thus enabling managers to gain prompt support and guidance from Human Resources on how best to respond to a situation to fulfill our obligations under the Equality Act. See Key Changes of the Equality Act: Implications for HoDs

How to respond to the use of a flag?

Where either flag is used, if this is a new issue, the manager should ensure that they explore with the employee, as soon as possible, the individual circumstances. The type of intervention a manager may consider, in discussion with the employee, will be dependent upon the unique circumstances of the case. Potential examples (not an exhaustive list) of this include:

• Risk assessments
• Display Screen Equipment (DSE) training
• Consideration of mediation
• Manual Handling training
• Eye test contributions
• Reasonable adjustments
• Referral to the SOHS (in all cases an employee must provide prior consent before an appointment can be made – please refer to "See Also" box)
• Staff Counselling
• Discussing with the employee a potential approach to Access to Work for support
• Identification of additional support such as HelpU, Harassment Network etc.

Where an employee’s level of absences becomes a cause for concern and includes absences that have been flagged as ‘disability related’, managers should again seek advice from Human Resources before determining next steps.

For further information as to how to disclose a disability and the benefits of doing so, please refer to the "See Also" box above.

3. When should a manager review and monitor sickness absence within their team/department/ faculty?

a) When a potential cause for concern has been identified.

For example:

• where the absences reach a trigger value (in such cases you will be notified of this via the generation of an automatic trigger report);
• a pattern appears to be present e.g. regular non-attendance on a Monday or Fridays etc;
• there are concerns that the absence is not genuinely due to sickness;
• possibility of a disability or underlying health issue.

In such cases these issues should be explored with the employee as part of a return to work discussion/interview.

b) Regularly as a matter of routine via the generation of a standard report.

See "Downloads" for separate guidance available on the "Sickness Data Report" to find out how to run it, what information it will enable you to identify and how to interpret this.  This report should be run regularly to gain information at team, department and faculty levels, in order to support managers to identify when and where intervention/support is required.

This guidance also provides information on how to add additional fields e.g. staff type (text personnel subarea) or grade and how to export this data into Microsoft Excel, to support further analysis of this.

4. Responsibilities under the Data Protection Act 1998

Any records in relation to an employee health is confidential and as such it is crucial that all such information is collected and stored in accordance with the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA), which specifies that the University must:

• only collect and retain information needed for a specific purpose;
• store information securely;
• ensure it is relevant and up-to-date;
• store only what is necessary, and for no longer than is necessary;
• enable the employee to see information relating to them on request.

These principles apply to all personal data, whether it is stored in an electronic or paper format. As such, this places a number of responsibilities on those who input and access sickness information.

Inputters:

• To accurately record information regarding absences provided by the employee
• Retain confidentiality
• Promptly notify the relevant manager where a work or disability related flag is used with the agreement of the employee

Managers/Those involved in the management or support of a case:

Ensure that:

• only information necessary to and relating directly to the management of a case should be sought;
• all information (e.g. return to work forms, records of review meetings/discussions, management referral reports etc.) are stored securely for example password protected;
• information is only shared with those directly involved in the management of sickness absence;
• records of all intervention/support and decisions taken to be retained to evidence compliance with the sickness absence management procedure.

If in any doubt about protocols for storing such information please contact your customary Human Resources Adviser.