Sick Notes: Plans To Move Responsibility Away From GP's
The Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, has announced plans to move responsibility for assessing fitness to work and the issuing of sick notes away from GP's to "specialist work and health professionals", as part of plans to address what he referred to as the development of a "sick note culture".
The announcement relating to sick notes on the 19th April 2024 comes as sickness absence rates and the number of people who have become economically inactive have reached record levels. The most recent statistics from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), for instance, found that the rate of sickness absence in the workplace reached 2.6% in 2022, up 0.8% compared with the rate recorded for 2020 (1.8%), and the highest rate recorded since 2004 (2.7%).
The ONS also found that 185.6 million working days were lost to sickness absence in 2022 (a new record), an average of 5.7 days per worker. That compares to the 138.2 million working days lost in 2019 just prior to the COVID-19 pandemic (an average of 4.2 days per worker), an increase of 47.4 million working days lost.
Moreover, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) found in their latest Health and wellbeing at work report released last September, that the average number of days off work due to sickness per employee had increased from 5.8 days per annum to 7.8 days per annum between 2019 (just prior to the COVID-19 pandemic) and 2023. In terms of working time lost, 7.8 days per annum per employee equates to 3.4%.
Furthermore, the latest ONS labour market statistics has found that the levels of economic inactivity amongst 16-64 year olds has also reached record levels with 9.4 million economically inactive (which equates to 22.2%). Of the 9.4 million that are economically inactive, a record 2.8 million are economically inactive due to long-term sickness.
All of this (including the record number of sick notes issued, with 11 million sick notes issued last year) has meant that the amount spent on disability and ill-health related welfare benefits has increased from £42.3 billion just prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, to £69 billion
In his announcement on sick notes, the Prime Minister stated: "We don’t just need to change the sick note, we need to change the sick note culture so the default becomes what work you can do – not what you can’t. We’re also going to test shifting the responsibility for assessment [and the issuing of sick notes] from GPs and giving it to specialist work and health professionals who have the dedicated time to provide an objective assessment of someone’s ability to work and the tailored support they need to do so."
The Prime Minister added: "We should see it as a sign of progress that people can talk openly about mental health conditions in a way that only a few years ago would’ve been unthinkable, and I will never dismiss or downplay the illnesses people have. But just as it would be wrong to dismiss this growing trend, so it would be wrong merely to sit back and accept it because it’s too hard; or too controversial; or for fear of causing offence......we need to be more ambitious about helping people back to work and more honest about the risk of over-medicalising the everyday challenges and worries of life."
Survey Finds 78% Of Workers Would Resign Due To Stress
A new survey from Unum UK has found that 78% of workers would quit their job if they felt that the stress levels had become too much. This ranked second only to salary (79%) in terms of reasons that would motivate them to resign. Moreover, just 49% believed that their employer provided sufficient mental health support.
