Attendance Management Structure: Royal Mail Operations 

 Attendance Management Structure: Royal Mail Operations 
Royal Mail has established an Operations HR Attendance Management Team. The team is headed by Jo Ferguson, National Head of Attendance and comprises heads of attendance for each of the three regions plus logistics, supported by attendance leads, six in the East, four each in the West and the North and three in logistics. The regional heads of attendance direct report is the Regional HR Director (team structure attached).

The team has been set up to build line management capability in managing attendance, ensure consistent application of the Attendance agreement and identify and ensure deployment of best practice. The Union has been assured that the remit of the team is to ensure that absence is managed consistently in line with the 2013 Attendance agreement. However, it has been created as a result of a slight increase in the level of absence in the 2014/15 financial year and a key objective of the team is to reduce the overall annual level of absence by ½ percent. 

The Union has welcomed the creation of the new structure. An increasing concern has been the re-emergence of aggressive approaches to absence management in many units, including intrusive contact during short term absence in breach of the national agreement, failure to consider circumstances and mitigating factors when issuing stage reviews in breach of the national agreement and use of threatened or actual stoppages of pay in cases of short term absence which would not normally require a certificate, where OH advice has differed from that of the individual’s GP or other medical professional or on spurious grounds of alleged “non compliance”. The new team provides a focus for discussion at regional and national level on absence management and where the Attendance agreement is being broken we will expect the support of the attendance team in addressing and resolving the problem. Monthly meetings are now taking place with the national head of attendance and senior field officials should ensure that regular contact is established with the regional teams. 

We are concerned that the team is operating to a specific targeted reduction in the level of sick absence. Our fear is that achieving an arbitrary figure will become an overriding goal leading to inappropriate behaviours to hide the real level of absence and signal to line managers that an aggressive and intolerant attitude should be taken. In this regard the recent initiative on absence over Christmas, reported separately in LTB 794/15, does not bode well.

The Union’s response should be clear – we should uphold the 2013 Attendance agreement and challenge any breach. It is a collective agreement and breaches are therefore not just an individual issue which can be channelled through the grievance procedure but a collective issue which can be addressed through the IR framework.

Any enquiries should be addressed to PTCS department, quoting reference PTC/RE/dj/415. 

Email address: djeffery@cwu.org  

 

Yours sincerely
 
 

Ray Ellis                                               

Assistant Secretary