Sickness absence
Board Wide Sickness Absence
2022/2023
Sickness absence is recorded by the service on the Scottish Standard Time System (SSTS) and statistics relating to the levels of sickness absence at a Departmental, Directorate and Board level are reported monthly to stakeholders by the Human Resources Department. The long term national standard for sickness absence is 4.0%. Over the monitored period the levels of sickness absence for NHS GJ were higher than the national standard each month, as can be seen in the chart below. The annual rate of sickness absence for 2022/2023 came in at 5.4%, compared to 5.7% for the previous year. The sickness absence trend over the year was slightly upward, similar to the previous year, but using a three-point moving average trend shows that it was falling towards the end of the year.
Human Resources continues to work closely with service management to manage sickness absence across the organisation, with the aims of supporting those on sick leave during their absence, providing assistance to enable those on sick leave to return to work, and helping managers to ensure that their staff remain at work.
We started to produce the annual Workforce Monitoring Reports to cover 2015/2016. Since that year sickness absence rates for NHS GJ have ranged between 4.4% and 5.7%. At 5.4% 2022/2023 has a lower rate than 2021/2022, and the trend for sickness absence since then has relatively flat, as can be seen in the chart below.
Comparison with Other National Boards and NHS Scotland
Since 2015/2016 sickness absence rates for NHS GJ have tended to be lower than for the National Boards and NHS Scotland as a whole, as can be seen in the chart below.
