Portsmouth council looks to reduce sick days with awareness campaigns and training

Portsmouth City Council significantly reduced the amount of hours lost due to issues such as muscle strain and ligament sprains in 2019 after figures showed it was the second biggest cause of absence.

New wellbeing and mental health campaigns for council staff were also launched in the past six months, as a figures showed a total of 14,503 working days were lost due to stress, anxiety and depression between February 2019 and 2020.

A report to be heard by the council's employment committee next week explained the changes being made to reduce sick days.

In the report Rochelle Kneller, the council's assistant director of human resources, said: 'In line with a national promotion on mental health and reducing stigma we ran a number of campaigns raising awareness of mental health in 2019, with mental health conditions increasing nationally we have also seen this reflect within the council increasing by over 2,000 working days lost.

'A number of activities, awareness campaigns and training opportunities can account for musculoskeletal conditions reducing by over 3,000 days over the last 12 months and we plan on continuing these initiatives moving forward.'

However, the overall number of sick days taken by council staff has increased since last year.

In February 2020 the average council worker took 10.91 days sick per year, up from 8.51 in February 2019.

This is above the average across 174 local councils in the UK of 8.8 a year.