Sickness Absence

The Cabinet Office has responsibility for the central guidance in the Civil Service Management Code on managing attendance. Working alongside key stakeholders the Cabinet Office helps departments to understand the strong connection between sickness absence, promoting the health and wellbeing of staff and delivering an engaged and motivated work force.

Recent Developments

Civil Service management have recently agreed the following measures to assist departments tackle sickness absence:

1. Guidelines to departments – the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has produced a checklist of good practice for Management Boards. The checklist is intended to help boards assess their current procedures and systems.
2. Senior Management masterclasses – a series of events designed by HSE and the National School of Government exploring aspects of the health and wellbeing agenda are ongoing.
3. Internal quarterly reporting – In future information will be provided by departments and collated by Cabinet Office on a quarterly basis. It will be used by management to understand and manage sickness absence in all parts of the Civil Service.

Civil Service statement on sickness absence

Departmental Performance

The Cabinet Office monitors the performance of departments by producing an annual report which is produced by an independent research company.

The latest Red Scientific report covering financial year 2006/07 is now available

• Sickness absence 2006–2007 report [2.9MB PDF]

This is the third and final report from RED Scientific on the Analysis of Sickness Absence in the Civil Service.

Previous sickness absence reports are also available:

• Sickness absence 2005 report[2MB PDF]
• Sickness absence 2004 report[3MB PDF]
• Sickness absence 2003 report[687KB PDF]