The Trust

Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust

The background

Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust was created through the merger of two NHS trusts in 2007 operating different absence recording and reporting methods which didn’t reflect and accurately capture the wide variety of working patterns within its workforce, only 20% of their employees work a standard Monday to Friday for example.

The approach

The trust moved to capture working hours lost to sickness absence as a percentage of contractual hours for all employees across all sites, interfacing this data to the electronic employee record monthly. From this, the trust exports the absence data from electronic employee record to report both internally and externally. By using working hours lost, the trust can report sickness absence, from employee level upwards, reflective of all shift and working pattern arrangements.

The impact

This allows for comparative analysis and consistent management of the sickness absence triggers across all staffing groups. Recording sickness absence in this way has allowed for the accurate provision of sickness absence information to line managers and their human resources support at employee level.

With this increased visibility, the trust is capturing all recorded absence data, enabling proactive management support and intervention. The implementation of a comprehensive sickness absence management policy, introduction of training for managers, centralising of the employee relations service, and this more accurate data recording has resulted in the sickness absence rate, in the last five years, reducing from 3.6% (12/13) to 2.9% in 17/18.

Any central reporting through the data warehouse will default to the standard electronic staffing record calculation used, this being reporting on days lost as a proportion of whole time equivalent. Reporting on working hours lost, as a percentage of contracted hours, results in a higher sickness absence rate than the standard electronic staffing record calculation, at approximately 0.50 percentage points.