Halting sick pay is ’doomed to failure’

As Tesco continues with its pilot of withholding the first three days of sick pay in order to help cut down on unplanned absence, a new poll suggests that most people working in HR feel the plan is ëdoomed to failure.í

The latest poll from HR Gateway ñ the HR news and information service - suggests that out of 288 voters almost half (49%) said that they thought the scheme was ëunfair and doomed to failureí with only seven per cent claiming it to be a stroke of HR ëgeniusí.

However, this doesnít mean that personnel professionals are totally against the idea. Over a third said that the docking of pay was ëflawed but interestingí suggesting that many firms will be keeping an eye on progress.

In the poll that asked the HR news website visitors to best describe their feelings about the scheme already in action at Sainsburyís and Asda, only 10% saw it as a ëpotential retention disasterí, suggesting most feel that it wonít effect turnover.

Ben Wilmott of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) said of the results that it was important that firms such as Tesco’s validate the three-day rule to ensure that genuinely ill employees do not
suffer:

ëPeople can feel penalised for being ill if firms do not ensure they have good people management policies in place before they choose this route. This is the challenge for Tesco’s in its pilots.

ëWe need firms to look for innovative ways of dealing with short-term absence, however, we need to judge the effect on morale through employee consultation. It will be interesting to see such results at Sainsburyís,í he said.

Sainsburyís has built the three-day rule into new starter contracts since last year, which has led to absence among those on the new deal being five per cent lower than workers on the old contract.

However, as Wilmott points out, organisations do not lower absence for the sake of just lowering absence; performance needs to be improved, and such sick pay schemes could have along term detrimental effect on performance.

Vanessa Stebbings of HR Gateway Consulting (HRGC) advises that firms look to tackling the root cause of the problem, rather than merely juggling the
effects:

ëThe 34% who voted ëflawed but interestingí in the poll would probably agree that a one solution suits all can create more problems than it solves, potentially increasing the volume of grievances to deal with.

ëTreating the cause rather than the symptom still has to be the preferred route when it comes to tackling absence as it may uncover bigger issues such as bullying for example,í she said.