Sickness absence recording in industry.

Abstract

Time lost in industry may be due to normal and extraordinary leave, certified and uncertified sick ness, accidents, leave without permission, and lateness. Clearly the unexpected absence, that is leave due to sickness and accident, absence without permission and lateness, is the most up setting to industry since normal and extraordinary leave are accepted, and, in the main, foreseen. Furthermore, time lost by a worker sometimes means additional time lost by the group in which he or she works. Of the unexpected absences sickness is the greater part, and there is evidence that certified sickness is much less influenced by socio-economic factors and legislation than are unexpected absences. In any industrial concern there will always be some sickness unrelated to the type of work, or to personal relationships, pay, promotion, bonuses, feelings of importance or lack of impor tance, and good or bad management. Where, however, there are adverse environmental and social factors of this kind there may be an increased sickness absence, although this is not necessarily so, but there is always a still greater increase in absences from causes. For instance, Behrend (1951) found in 46 factories in 1948 that there appears to be no close connection between the level of the reasons absence rate and the certified sickness absence rate , and, similarly, that there was only a negligible difference between the sickness absence rate in the 10 factories with the highest reasons rate and that in the 10 with the lowest rates for reasons. ( Other reasons includes authorized leave.) New cases of sickness absence are more commonly recorded as starting on Mondays and less commonly on Fridays, with a gradation between the two. Clearly Monday shows a peak because illness may have started on the preceding Saturday or Sunday, but as Behrend points out, the average daily certified sickness rate should be the same on every day of the week, with the exception that most return to work on a Monday and least on a Friday. In a company employing 370 men studied for nine months she found the average weekly certified sickness absence rates to be 3-0% on Monday and 3-2% on Friday. The highest level was 3-3% on Wednesday. There was therefore little difference throughout the week. Similarly in the coal-mines Behrend showed that the sickness rate was lowest on Monday and highest on Saturday, in contrast to the voluntary absence rate which was highest on Monday and Saturday and lowest on Friday. These findings, taken in conjunction with Beh rendt demonstration of a lack of correlation between certified sickness absence and other reasons absence, suggest that a separate study of sickness absence is worth while because in the main it is caused by true morbidity in the working population. Until there are adequate statistics of this kind in all sections of industry, it is impossible to apply preventive measures for the benefit of the work people and of the firms employing them. Adequately reliable data may be obtained from the statutory medical certificate, and small concerns should find it to their advantage to record and analyse them. Raffle (1950) in a large working group showed that in sickness and accident of long duration 80% of the diagnoses given on general practitioners' medical certificates fell into the same broad groups (of 21 headings) as the diagnosis subsequently made by the medical officers of the industry. Employers often want to know how the sickness experience of persons employed by them compares with a similar labour force in factories. If their own rate is high then a detailed analysis may point a remedy and allow measures to prevent ill health to be taken. The comparisons required, even if the necessary data were available, are not quite as simple as they may appear to be. Sickness absence may be influenced by light or heavy work ; for example, a person with a chronic disability may be able to do a light job but not a heavy one and 264