Concerns have been raised over absentee rates within Armagh, Banbridge and Craigavon Council.
At last Thursday’s (March 14) Performance & Audit Committee meeting, Alliance councillor, Robbie Alexander, asked what measures the local authority had put in place to reduce absenteeism.
He commented: “[Regarding] the draft performance Improvement objectives, the one that sort of sticks out to me is ‘We will reduce the average number of days’ sickness absence lost per employee’.
“This is a topic that’s kind of come into this chamber a fair bit over the last while, and I’m conscious that this was also an improvement objective last year, and potentially the year before and the year before.
“What are we actually doing differently now versus previous years? Is there any meaningful change that we’re hoping to make to again bring that down?
“I have no issue with the report, but for me the one glaring omission from that is staff retention rates,” said Cllr Alexander.
“This is not just absence [due to] people being off sick, but we’ve seen quite a lot of people – particularly in key roles – leaving the organisation, and it’s quite difficult then to hire people of a similar quality.
“That pool of people that we’re able to hire into those roles become smaller and smaller.
“I would hope to see something around staff retention. If we can retain staff and train them, and if staff have a reason to want to be part of this organisation, that’s going to benefit everybody.
“So I’d be really keen to see something around that in the future.”
Committee chair, Alderman Paul Greenfield (DUP, Banbridge DEA) concurred with the Alliance representative.
“They’re very valid points. It’s good that our organisation has so many quality staff in it,” he said.
“It’s a small pool over here and I know we have struggled sometimes to fill some posts but we have been actively doing that.”
Head of Strategy & Performance, Martina McNulty replied: “There is a rigorous process that officers go through with colleagues across Council in relation to developing annual improvement objectives.
“In relation to sickness absence, whilst there may be a trend down in some areas, we’re still not where we want to be with it, so there’s an awful lot of work being done.
“Objectives don’t come off annual plans unless there’s a justification for doing that, as verified by the audit office who regularly also audit our Improvement plans and annual self-assessment reports.”
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