 Fodd genio ar y Gweithdoedd y 6 ydy dyn nhw o'r bynnag oedd yn wirgylfaith ym勢 yn 2019. Gael gyda'r ffordd a'r tvwn i chi chi'n bwysig o'r gwleidydd mewn gwleidydd mewn gwirionedd. Fodd y troed bydd yn ymddi i gwybod i'n fyngor i Aelod Rai вид, os yma mae'r gwybod gyda'r heimaid yn nesgrifennu, ychydig o'r digwydd ar gŷn oedda i gweithio eich gweithio ar gyfer yr unionid 3 yn prifent. Fodd ben yn Ymddi'r ffawr? Mae hyn yn i. GwGülmewch chi ar-doedd. Diolch, Gwn i'r wych chi i gynnig yn cael gyffredinol ar gyfer sigr, yn cyfgrifhau a'r a'r llwg pan fydd gyda codi i'r cydweithio arbennig. Mae Gwmae ddweud o gwair o gnoes yng Nghymru yn cael ei gweld, ac gyda chi ysgrifeth yn rhoi gwbl yn gyfgrifach a'r gweithio fath o amlwg ac efallai'r cyfgrifeth yn cael ei gweld. Rydyn ni'n gwybod ar hyn, roedd eich bywyd wedi cyngor, ond byddwch chi'n gwybod i'n I will go round to my right. My name is James Dornan, MSP, and I am the convener of the Local Government and Communities Committee. Good morning. My name is Nicky Bridal. I am chief executive at Clackmannanshire Council. Good morning. My name is Stuart Crick. I am strategic director at Clackmannanshire Council. Andy Wightman, MSP for Lothian. Joanna Baxter. I am unison's head of local government bargaining. Alexander Stewart, MSP for Mid Scotland 5. Drew Duffage, MSP Scotland, senior organiser for public services. Graham Simpson, MSP for Central Scotland. I'm Sharon McKenzie. I'm here on behalf of the Society of Personnel and Development Scotland. I'm currently its president. I'm Kenneth Gibson, MSP for Culliam North. I'm Paul McGowan, head of HR, East Ayrshire Council. I'm Annabelle Ewing, MSP for Culliam Beath constituency. To my left, we have the official report. Researchers in the clarts will provide the committee with background support. This is a round table evidence session, which means that I very much welcome a flow of discussion and exchanges of different views. You should feel free to engage directly with each other. However, it would be very helpful if you could direct your comments through me in the chair. If you wish to say anything, just try to catch my eye or the clarts. Before I invite questions, can I just remind members, but also the other people who are here today, that you do not need to press a button to speak, it will come on automatically. I'd like to start off by asking a fairly simple question and really the reason why we're here today. Anybody has any ideas about the reasons for the wide variation in absence rates between local authorities, which we've seen can be quite stark. Does anybody wish to start on that one? I thought that it might be useful, as we haven't submitted a paper, if I can take you through some of Unison's experiences with regard to sickness absence management across the 32 local authorities in Scotland. I'll try to keep it brief. The first thing to say is that all the available data out there with regard to the number of days lost through sickness absence do not reflect the full picture of what we see on the ground. The reason for that is that there are significant differences across the local authorities in terms of what data is collected, what's recorded as sickness absence, the make-up of their workforce, the level of HR support available to support people returning to work and the different policies and procedures that apply across each local authority. In Unison's experience, sickness absence management should be used as a supportive mechanism to help individuals to return to work, and where we find that that is the case, there are lower levels of sickness absence, fewer days lost to sickness absence and fewer disciplineries taken as a result of sickness absence. Where that is not the case and procedures are used in a punitive manner, we see higher levels of sickness absence, higher levels of sickness absence review meetings and disciplinary proceedings taking place as a result of sickness absence. We believe that that is both time consuming for management for the trade unions and also has a negative effect on employees. One example that I would provide for that is our experience in Glasgow City Council where prior to the most recent administration taking over we found that there was quite a punitive system in place and with the new administration taking over we found that the approach, while the procedure itself has not considerably differed, the approach taken in terms of staff who are absent is of a much more supportive manner than existed in the past. One thing that we have seen recently is that triggers for review are getting shorter, review periods for absence themselves are also getting shorter and in every case where we find an employer has altered their sickness absence procedure. In the last three years they have done so only in a manner that triggers intervention at an earlier stage of the process. Some local authorities have moved to an entirely metric based system, for example the Bradford Factor. We would say that that is the opposite of a people-centred management programme, in fact that is entirely the opposite of that and it is management by algorithm and you can see that in places like East Renfrewshire Leisure for example. With regard to FOI data for the last three years that indicates that the most common reason for sickness absence across local authorities that trigger any sort of review process is mental health absences and in our experiences managers very often feel more confident and capable of putting in place procedures for supporting individuals where they have a physical disability for example and find it more difficult to put in place supportive mechanisms for individuals suffering from mental health issues. That is also not helped by the degree of change, organisational change which is taking place across local authorities at the present time. When we have FOI councils on how many staff have been taken through absence management procedures, a significant number of them have returned saying that they do not hold that data centrally. That applies in Midlothian, Aberdeenshire, Argyll and Bute and Western Bartonshire. Additionally, we believe that there is a significant problem with presentism. Individuals attending work when they should be off on sick leave is driven by the lowering of triggers. Individuals fearing that a review period would be put in place if they took the time off that they needed. That leads to longer absences in the long term because individuals are attending when they should be off set. The pressure on staff to deliver and concerns about jobs stability. Unison does not have a role in at least trying to persuade councils that they should have best practice issues or that there should be some sort of uniform way of reporting absences because that clearly does not seem to be working. Absolutely, and we certainly do that in all the negotiations that we engage in across all 32 local authorities. We use best practice across the country. The difficulty that we find in those negotiations is the level of HR support available in councils and the funding available for that. Funding certainly has an impact on that issue, not just in terms of HR support but the level of change that is being experienced within councils and the level of jobs that have been lost within local authorities. 15,000 jobs have been lost in local authorities over the past five years. We are expecting that existing cohort of staff to do more with less on an almost consistent basis and councils being ever more restricted in the funding available and how they choose to spend that. I am sure that there are comments that would like Kenny and then... With regard to the data, what was said is very significant in terms of variations in data. I noticed that when we got the SPICE information with regard to all the local authorities over the last eight years, what struck me not just the fact that Cluck Maninshire has the highest in East Ayrshire has lost in the most recent year 2017-18, but Cluck Maninshire in 2012-13 had the highest absences of non-teaching staff at 21.07. However, the following year it went down to 7.92, which then became the lowest in Scotland, and then it has become the highest in Scotland again. I am just wondering whether or not there has been a change in how you record those figures or what those figures represent and how there has been a change, because we want to make sure that we are comparing apples with apples and not apples with oranges. Thank you for that question. It is one of the things that is something that stretched us a little bit within the council. We up until about four years ago had what was basically a manual recording system, so about four years ago we implemented a full HR system, which has really refined the recording of all our absence data. I think that what you have probably seen is perhaps in history an element of under recording for sickness absence was coming through for the council. What I would say now is that we are super squeaky clean in terms of every single absence that we record. I do think that in terms of your point about comparability of the approaches across councils, I think that there is still quite a bit of variability in terms of how these things are recorded, even for the benchmarking framework. You would still want to deal with the substantive issue, but that is a consideration, too, in terms of the apples and pears comparison. Has anyone been done through COSLA, for example, to ensure standardised measurements? There are definitions that come out through the local government benchmarking framework, but even within those parameters there are different applications of those definitions. I am not actually an HR specialist, you will appreciate that, and I am sure that other colleagues may wish to comment on that. We are aware that there are certain things that we include everything, and we have just been having a conversation with colleagues about that. We include things like leavers data, maternity absences. We are aware that that is not the case necessarily across all other councils. As a follow-on to Nicky's comments on how absences are captured and recorded, it is fair to say that the local government benchmarking framework guidance is fairly clear in terms of what should be included and what should not be included in the calculations. We have a sense that that is perhaps not being applied comprehensively and diligently across all councils, and it may just come down to local interpretation of what is said in the guidance, as opposed to trying not to capture all of the absence data. It is something that we were speaking about prior to coming into the meeting today, and it is certainly something that, in my role acting on behalf of SPDS, I can pick up with the improvement service, and we intend to do that. I think that it really is important that, if we have a set of benchmarking information, we are comparing like with like, because otherwise it becomes quite difficult to interpret what is really happening across the 32 councils. I think that one of the issues is that, while we have the guidance nationally to follow, the systems that we are using are all different. Most councils are probably recording sickness absences through the payroll and management information systems. We do not have a system that is pan-Scotland that everyone is using to record absences. We are using different systems. I do not think that that is an excuse for data being different, but it adds to the complexity of the situation. Within those systems, and certainly from my own councillor's experience, we record lots of different information there. We break down absences in different ways in terms of reasons. That, again, is for each individual authority to record the complexity of absence as they see fit. We have areas such as mental health, personal stress that we are all pulling together, but I do not think that any of the 32 councils would have 14 or 20 definitions of absence that they use consistently across the council. It is a complex area, but I think that the complexity of the methods that we are using to record that add to that. Alexander Stewart has identified how complex the area really is, but we have had evidence in other sessions from local government and individuals within authorities about the ageing workforce, the reduction that has happened over the last few years in the workforce and the majority of councils. When we are looking at sickness absence, a number of people have potential long-term sickness to contend with, and one or two individuals may then skew the whole process depending on how that is recorded. How are you managing that with the knowledge that you have an ageing population, a reducing workforce and the potential to have a number of long-term individuals who may well give you more information on that level, which then gives you a priority going forward? How do you manage that? Is that being managed in a similar way across the local authorities that we have? The point that I wanted to make was that we made a conscious decision not to include within our submission the issue of the comparability, because we are aware that it is an on-going issue. I agree with Sharon's comment that it is something that we feel that we need to be working on. For us, the more important thing is that we are focused on the substantive issue of effectively managing absence and supporting our employee cohorts. I just wanted to make that point, because I think that it is quite important. The comparability that I can absolutely appreciate is very important for the committee's purposes. However, we still need to deal with the substantive issue because we are seeing an increase in absence levels. Surely there has to be some sort of way that you are dealing with your own issues in the same way across the country that can be reported across the country. I am not saying everybody does exactly the same thing, but it must be a report mechanism that can be used to make sure that the committee and therefore the Parliament gets the information that they need to make sure that things go right. Graham, you wanted to come in. I appreciate that councils are using different methods. Perhaps they should not be, perhaps they should be more uniform. Nevertheless, some councils have done better than others. Your own council, Nicky, I am not picking on you because I know that you are quite new to the job, has really not done very well. The absence levels have rocketed since 2010, but in other councils that has not been the case, East Ayrshire has gone down. The reason for this session was that we were looking at these raw figures and we were wondering what is going on in East Ayrshire. What are they doing that Clack Manager and others are not doing? Could we roll out what is going on in East Ayrshire and others where they have seen a reduction? Could we roll out those practices across the country? I think that that is a perfectly valid question and I can understand that question having reviewed the data. The issue for Clack Manager is that, as I said probably four years ago when we introduced the new system, we now have a much fuller and more accurate reporting of our absences for all different reasons. That is actually allowing us to understand the nature of the absences far better. I think that if you look at our policy framework and the level of support that is afforded to our staff, it compares very favourably with those arrangements that are in place in other councils. One of the things that we are doing is that we are looking with health colleagues just now at our local health demographic data because a significant proportion of the council's staff is from the local area. We are aware anecdotally that there have been increasing GP referrals. We are also aware anecdotally that there have been increases in chronic conditions for a number of people in our area. We are actually looking beyond the traditional bounds of the policy framework and the support mechanisms to get a better understanding and thinking about whether there are other interventions and supports that we could be putting in place beyond those traditional approaches. I'll let you in first, Drew. Joanna, what's coming? I'm not going to repeat exactly what Joanna said wrong because I think she's spawning, but I guess the reason we're here is to give a bit more data about the real life stories behind those figures. I think there's a big problem about how local government workers feel valued and that does very inconsistently across the local authority. A lot of our members in the GMB in particular are at a low paid bottom four or five scales across local government. Those are the workers that are doing two or three jobs just to make ends meet, so they don't have the same rest time. They don't work Monday to Friday, eight to five. They're working six, seven days a week, split shifts, so they're tired, exhausted. Even the jobs that they're in, they're doing the work of two or three people because they've lost colleagues and they've not been replaced. In some councils we've got a worker who works in the kitchen in the afternoon for the local government, gets paid the living wage or the Scottish local government living wage, then she finishes her shift, she walks down the corridor, she's working for a private company and she's losing over a pound an hour. Within the same building, she's going back ten years in pay because she's working in the same place because her employer changes, she just changes her penny. How does that worker feel valued at the end of that working week? They're not doing that by choice, that's a necessity. We've run a recent survey across pupil support assistants in Aberdeen City and Aberdeenshire. 90 per cent of the people who respond to that say that they've suffered either violent or physical or verbal attacks in work. In Aberdeenshire, just recently, 75 per cent of those who were reported never got any feedback about that. How do those workers are being bit, chewed at, swallowed, spat at, verbally abused? One had a scar put around her neck and was choked and had to fight that scar off. That was reported, no feedback on that. How does that worker feel valued, that affects their mental health, their physical health? It's just to give you the committee an idea of some of the real-life stories. It will not take us into the way that different councils are dealing with HR issues. Obviously, there will be some councils that would deal with that better than the councils that you're talking about in situations like that. To be fair to the city of Anshire, the three unions have all sat with us. I think that the councils have accepted that that's not on. Those figures and real-life stories are not acceptable. We are looking to reform the whole reporting process, the training, but fundamentally it comes down to, particularly in the PSAs, pupil support assistants. Is the demand for help from children on the increase, while the funding for support for children is on the decrease? That could only go. This is the result of that direct attack on funding and education. I think that that would probably be different across different councils. There are probably pockets of our workforce where there might be commonalities. Within education, teachers' absence, as you see from the statistics that you have before you, generally is reporting better than non-local government employees' absence over the piece. There is a creeping trend among teaching workforce for increasing levels of absence in different organisations, different councils. Much of that has been reported quite widely and extensively in the press in relation to increased workloads, the pressures of the job. Some of the issues mentioned by Drew Duffy in relation to violence integration in schools affecting not just the teacher workforce but non-teaching workforce as well. Across the local government workforce, if you take teachers out of the mix, generally you may find pockets of absence occurring in particular parts of the organisation where they are at the front line. Perhaps, as my colleague Drew said, where they are delivering front-line services in what were perhaps manual and traditional areas of work. There are refuse collectors and street sweepers. Those who are involved in working in all sorts of weather can often experience high levels of sickness absence. Generally, on the shorter term absences, they are affected by colds and flues and musculoskeletal type issues. I am not sure that we could say absolutely across every council that we are all the same in terms of our peaks, in terms of types of absences within particular parts of the organisation. That data would be available. There is no doubt about that. We could each speak on behalf of our own councils in terms of where the different pressure points are. I am just surprised that what Mr Mackenzie said there, because, according to the figures that we get from SPICE, the level of absenteeism among teachers is the lowest in the last eight years, which contradicts what she has just said in terms of increasing. One of the things that is pointed out is that we have heard about different measurements, but the Council's commission at its annual local government in Scotland challenges performance publication said starkly that if councils with high absence levels could reduce seas to be in line with the top eight performing councils, they would gain the equivalent staff time of 730 full-time employees. In terms of teaching, there are 260 full-time teachers in Scotland. Although there has been a discussion about different forms of measurement, there clearly appears to be a differential across councils about how the matter is addressed. There is surely much to be gained by sharing of best practice, so I am just wondering what is being done to ensure that we are sharing best practice to minimise these levels and ensure that we do have more staff to deliver the services that we all want and need. One of the things in terms of variability that we have recognised is that, within the council, we have areas in which absences have been managed favourably and perhaps unfairly, but one of the key things that comes through in our analysis is turnover in managers, perhaps gaps in managerial staff. I am reflecting on the comments that trade union colleagues have made. Employee engagement is crucial in that. When you have quite a churny manager, what sometimes happens is that employee engagement drifts away a bit and you get gaps in that. That is one of the things that we are absolutely clear on, making sure that we have the right managers in the right place with the right skills. We have a leadership development programme, making sure that we are getting that level of employee engagement in the last six months. We have been doing quite a lot of work at a senior level to make sure that we are getting out there and speaking to employees. That is something that we have recognised and has already started to make a difference. In terms of some of the other practice areas that we feel that we could be learning from others, we know in our organisation that the highest levels of absences by some margin are the 45 to 59-year-olds, predominantly female because our workforce is predominantly female. One of the areas that we feel that we need to do a wee bit more research and perhaps look at what other councils are doing is that cohort of staff are likely to have care responsibilities and other pressures in their work life. What we have been seeing creeping in in the past few years in particular is that stress-related absences are increasing, but it tends to be non-work-related stress, so there are other pressures going on in people's lives. We feel that we need to look at best practice elsewhere in Scotland in terms of carer and special leave policies. We could learn from others in that particular field. I think that I have to be honest and say that I have no silver bullet that I can offer to say that this is what we can do across Scotland. I think that there is absolutely merit in making sure that we have robust procedures and that they are applied consistently within councils, and that is important. I do not think that anybody would disagree. Certainly, from my perspective in East Ayrshire, we are very much looking at prevention. We recognise that people will be ill, and that is a fact of life. Our council, 75 per cent of the employees, live and work in the council area, so in a sense the council is the community. We are looking at prevention, and I do not think that there is one answer. We try as best as we can to anticipate particular hotspots. We look at our profile to answer an earlier question. We have not seen any particular area that is a peak. For example, in terms of prevention, prior to Christmas and recognising that Christmas can be a difficult time in relation to personal stress, we ramped up our service in terms of employee counselling. We put those measures in place to say that here is the offering that we can support you as a service to use, and we will get some evidence back into how that worked. Working with trade union colleagues about interventions has recently rolled out a suicide prevention scheme, because we have an increased rate of suicide and mental health issues within our communities. Again, we are looking to set up that in a suicide prevention mental health first aiders within the workplace, and that has come down very well with our workforce trade union colleagues who see it as a valuable support. We need to try and anticipate what is on the horizon, but not to be complacent in terms of our policy procedures to make sure that we are recording things consistently and applying what we say we will do. I agree with Drew Duffy on the difficult issues that members are facing in the workplace, particularly with regard to violence in schools. That has been a particular issue facing unison members on the front line. That has an impact on the number of days recorded as sickness absence and on individuals who are feeling at work. I think that one thing that I would say is that there is a difference across councils, not simply with recording, but with regard to how policies are applied with respect to intervention and at what stage intervention takes place. This is about the trigger points. Someone has been offered X number of days and is called to a conversation with their manager and the form that conversation takes, whether it is supportive or punitive. What we have found is that very often there is no discretion within those policies about the application of triggers and what those triggers then lead to. There needs to be management discretion for individual issues. What we have seen is a number of councils doing things that would help to prevent sickness absence. For example, South Lanarkshire Council has recently introduced with dialogue and discussion with the trade unions a menopause policy to support individuals who are going through the menopause that we believe will lead to a reduction in the amount of time off through sickness absence. Some councils have introduced things along the lines of domestic abuse and supporting individuals at work when they are experiencing those issues. There is certainly an issue with regard to compassionate leave for individuals who have caring responsibilities. That is an ageing workforce with more and more caring responsibilities placed upon them and predominantly those who fall on the female workforce. There are discussions around phased retirement and supporting individuals who want to stay at work but perhaps need to phase into retirement. There are good examples out there. I am not sure that there are sufficient forums or dialogue taking place to share those instances of best practice. The other thing that needs to be shared is support for councils with regard to occupational health service referrals, where they get their occupational health service support from and who provides their employee counselling. There are massive differences across the country with regard to provision of those services and how robust they are and how supportive they are for employees. On that point, I used to be a councillor in South Lanarkshire. If I was a vice convener of a committee, we regularly had discussions about absence rates and myself and the convener at that time. We were constantly saying, when are you going to review your policies? The figures are far too high, they are still too high. I know that you mentioned the menopause policy, which is to be welcomed in South Lanarkshire, but it is still far too high. We were encouraging them to think about using outside organisations. You mentioned occupational health, setting up helplines that were not the council that council employees could go to. It strikes me that just listening to people around the table that doesn't appear to be any kind of forum in Scotland for sharing best practice, and that would be a very good idea if there was. If there was something to come out of this, it may be something like that, so you could discuss things in far more detail and Mr McGowan can blow his trumpet a bit more loudly than he has today. If I could share just on that particular point in terms of a forum for sharing best practice, the Society of Personnel and Development, one of the things that is sort of intrinsic to its operation, is that we do offer that supportive network across local councils. We have membership drawn from 30 of the 32 councils in Scotland, and we have a range of portfolio groups that are themed around particular topics. Topics that are relevant to the work of councils currently and the challenges that they face. One of those groups is the wellbeing portfolio group, which looks holistically at a whole range of issues relating to health and wellbeing. Not just the punitive sides of how to manage absence, but it looks at all of the supportive and softer measures that could be applied across councils in Scotland. We use that group very much as a group to share best practice, to learn from each other. It is a very strong networking group, and membership is open to all of the councils who are members of SPDS to be part of that group. It is very much a group that does concentrate on sharing good practice and providing that support and networking across councils in relation to the subject matter. I am going to like Graham come back on this, because I was going to comment about it, but I think that Graham was probably going to say something. That is all very well, but it is clearly not happening. We have heard today that the representatives from Clack Manager, if they are aware of this, do not be able to be feeding into it. They might well be, but there should be something far more formal than whatever it is. It is clearly not working. We have a wide disparity of figures. Best practice is not being shared and should be, because we need to get those figures down. I would probably disagree with you in terms of us not sharing best practice, because that is very much a feature of the group. What we tried to express in the submission that we have shared with committee today is that there is a commonality across councils in terms of the different approaches. We are all broadly doing very much the same thing. We are looking at our policy interventions, tweaking them where they need to be tweaked, but recognising and realising that policy interventions alone are not going to solve the problem. It is very much about application and practice in councils, and that is where we truly learn from each other through the wellbeing group. It is just with regard to the Society of Personnel and Development Scotland submission. We have talked a lot about how we deal with absenteeism, but one of the points that was raised, which I found interesting, was that second to stress in the public sector, management style is the biggest cause of long-term absence. I am just wondering how that can be improved in order to stop people becoming ill in the first place, not just about how we deal with people who want to become ill. I will come back to yours. The trade unions side have tried to have a dialogue with COSLA around bringing more terms and conditions back to collective national agreements. We do not have many, most 32 or separate. The problem has been that when conversations were happening, Derek Mackay controls 58 per cent of local government budget. They are looking at it. They are using those discussions. They are like, what can we cut to do this? That was never our intention. We want to try to, because there are good practices and we would probably prefer. There are a lot of things that we could do to have national agreements, like we have got, the teachers have got and the NHS have. There is not a lot that is discussed. There is a national agreement that sick pays one of them, but there is more that we could do collectively to have more national agreements. The problem has been that it always comes down to the budget for local government that has been hammered so much. The trade unions side was never there to give something away to bring something back. Those conversations died to death, if I am honest. To come on to Mr Gibson's point, stress is just used. One word covers a huge variety of different things. You have mental health, worker-related stress, personal finances involved in that, relationship issues, addiction issues. It is a massive, massive issue that is inconsistent. Some councils do quite well. They use occupational health well. Some have private councillors that they cannot contact. We work as much as we can. That brings up the point that Joanna May earlier on, but I want to bring Annabelle in first. I had wondered the same thing, because certainly speaking to people who work in the front line in my part of the country, some of the stories they tell about how, picking up some of Drew's points, what they experience on the front line and then they go back to their manager at their local authority and they get no support at all. I think that there needs to be some attention focused seriously on how front line workers are being supported. The issues that all employers will face about people with caring responsibilities and all the rest of it. To what extent is there a pattern of flexible working in local authorities? Many other organisations, both public and private, have a very serious attempt to have a meaningful flexible working policy, which can make the difference between people being able to go to their work or not. I do not hear any mention of that yet this morning, as far as local authorities are concerned, so that would be one issue. Another issue is, what do Solace do? I take the point about national collective bargaining, but not all of the issues that we are talking about are necessarily within that framework. There are many other issues here. If Solace's chief executive councils get together, what is it that they do? What do they do? Perhaps you could enlighten us. I think that, in the interests of fairness, I am going to let Nicky come in at this point. I actually wanted to pick up the point about the management style and culture first, because I think that that is an absolutely critical part of this. We are certainly viewing as our way forward in terms of a potential solution. It was mentioned earlier. I have only been in post since last summer, but one of the things that I am prioritising quite significantly is investment in improving the visibility of management, and that is at all levels, but also equipping management with the right skills to have the confidence to be able to properly support staff when they have some of the range of different circumstances that have been described this morning. A lot of managers are actually not confident in dealing with some of those things. They can be very difficult things to manage, and they need support and training to develop the skills to be able to effectively manage those situations. As Stuart mentioned earlier, we are investing in leadership development in the council, but with a particular focus on certain aspects that include maximising attendance and managing change. We are finding that we are in local government within this constant cycle of change now. Don't particularly see that going away. It is giving us different issues for us. Stuart mentioned one significant one in terms of the management layer changing or the roles of managers changing, so there is a need to make sure that the people in those posts are equipped to carry out the supportive functions that are required. The cultural aspect is really important. That is not an easy thing to fix. I am sure that you will appreciate that. It needs many different actions in terms of being able to get to the positive empowering culture that you would like in the organisation. I think that if you have that sort of culture, and I would suggest that we are on that journey, you do find that it is a much more motivating, positive experience for staff coming to the work, and that is what we are aspiring to. As I said, I do not think that I will be able to fix that in six months, but I think that it is a big part of the solution to that. I am not sure how well-equipped I feel to speak for the other 32 chief execs, but there is a significant work programming in Solace that covers a number of policy areas. What tends to happen is that those are prioritised, and the relevant policy boards are set up to take forward the negotiations on those. I am quite happy that, certainly, I know that absence is something that comes up quite a lot in the discussions in the short period of time that I have been engaged with Solace. Probably, it comes up consistently across a number of the different policy themes that are being looked at. I think that you are tapping to quite an important issue in terms of not being pulled out as an issue in its own right at the moment, but it is certainly a strong theme that comes through recurrently in all of the policy debates that I have been party to. Very briefly, on the SPDS forum that was mentioned, I think that that is all well and good, but that does not bring our trade union colleagues into those discussions. I do think that there needs to be a joint forum for discussing those issues because I have a role to play in that. It should not take the forum, as Drew has already described, of having a discussion about what to cut. Going on to the wider point that has been made about management style, this is a really significant issue. The biggest factor in driving management style at the moment is change management and the amount of change that local authorities are being asked to undertake. That is driven by cuts to budgets. It has been driven by the reducing amount of their budget that they now have control over. What that has meant in recent years is constant change within local authorities. The number of meetings that Drew and other trade union colleagues face at the moment is the meetings that we go to, where we are discussing reorganisations of departments, where we are deleting X number of posts, where managers are taking on more individuals to manage, where their work flow is changing, they are taking on additional responsibilities. The pressure that puts on the workforce is one that causes stress, which causes things to be deprioritised in favour of delivering additional work. The things that are deprioritised are things like management training, which they need in order to feel confident and capable of delivering as managers for the people that they support. Can I ask you that point now? You talked earlier on about the Glasgow example, where things changed overnight. That is the point that you made. That was just about a change of attitude. That does not take a lot of expensive training meetings to go to see that your attitude should be person-focused, as opposed to figure-focused. First of all, it did not change overnight, but there was a change in tone. That does not take huge amounts of training, but it does take leadership. Leadership is impacted by the degree of change. One thing that I would say about the Glasgow example is that the words on the policy itself did not change dramatically. The engagement of staff did. The culture and respect of the policy being applied as a supportive mechanism, rather than a punitive mechanism, did. I would go back to the point that has been made previously. You cannot take 15,000 people out of the workforce over a period of five years and not expect that to impact on management style, organisational change and the pressure that individuals feel in doing their jobs. Can you go back to the Glasgow example? No local authority will have seen a change in staff any more than Glasgow has? Absolutely. I am not saying that it is the only thing, but certainly. I am also not saying that Glasgow is now perfect. What I am saying is that— Even I am not trying to say that. I am sure that my colleagues in the Glasgow city branch would have something to say if I did. No, it is not perfect. What I am saying is that there was a change in culture. Culture change is driven by leadership style. You do find that our leaders in local authorities are under pressure because of cuts to their budgets. You have not seen the Glasgow example replicated in many other places. People are struggling at the moment to deal with many of these issues. That is why things such as flexible working policies, while we advocate those, exist in many areas. One of the first things to go when people are under pressure is that bit of flexibility for somebody to leave that bit ill or to pick up their kids or to look after their elderly parent. Those are the first things to go when people are stretched. It is not a question of it. The key thing about flexible working is that it is not to be a largesse on the part of the employer. It is to be a right and entitlement on the part of the employee. I am not talking about a discretionary or you can go home at 2 o'clock. I am talking about it being built into the employment practices of the relevant organisation. That is what seems to be missing. I would agree with you, but discretion is the first thing that goes and, although it should not be at the whim of a manager's discretion, it very often is. That is our experience on the ground. We would advocate greater flexibility. It does help and support people in their workplace, but those things are pressured because of cuts to budgets. We have talked about the culture and the engagement that you are all doing in your management roles within the organisations. I had the privilege of being in council myself for 18 years in Perth and Kinross. We went out to the private sector and looked at some of the large employers in the community. For example, Scottish and Southern Energy or Aviva, when we talked to them about what they were doing and how they were managing the resource themselves to see what lessons could be learned from the private sector. Can I ask about what you are doing within that role? Have you similar experiences to that? Are you using that as a forum to try to manage that change in culture and the change in management styles that you are all dealing with? I take it that was aimed at you, thank you. I certainly was looking in your direction. I am happy to take that. The short answer is yes. I was just reflecting with colleagues prior to coming into the committee this morning. Even personal experiences of private sector, because what you see are perhaps more flexibility in some of the way that policies are deployed, too. One of the examples that I was just discussing with colleagues was one from the financial sector, where one of this particular company—it is a large company, I won't name them—had particular issues with sickness absence. Also, because of their understanding of the situation and the factors for the underlying absences, I realised that there were a number of short-term absences arising because of care responsibilities or domestic emergencies. They introduced a specific leave entitlement around caring responsibilities. It is why we are looking at that particular area, because we think that we have also got that issue. We were just talking about that. You wake up in the morning and there is a pressing domestic emergency, be it either from a caring responsibility, childcare or something else of that ilk. They created an allowance. I think that it was something like five days per annum. It was something that was at managerial discretion. What that organisation found was that it had a dramatic impact on their sickness absence levels, because staff knew that they had a go-to place in terms of those sorts of emergencies that meant that they did not have to use sickness absence or annual leave as the automatic panacea for that particular emergency. Just a couple of things on a few of the points that have just been made. In relation to family-friendly policies, I think that they are very well embedded across councils. Research would show that if we pulled that information in that there is a suite of family-friendly provisions across all councils, they may be very slightly different in their nuances but the broad principles of them will be the same. Where the issue may be is in the application of the family-friendly policy and this perhaps comes back to Joanna's point. We have seen changes in councils over the years. Councils have become smaller in terms of their employment status, there are fewer people working for local government now. Layers have been taken out at a management level and at a supervisory level. The needs of the new manager, the new supervisor are quite different to what was there before. There is an emphasis now in councils on building confidence at that level to have the conversations with individuals and to develop the relationship with the people they manage. In times of crisis where they need extra support, they do not revert to sickness absence to cover a caring responsibility. They have that up-front conversation with their manager and the manager feels equipped because they understand the empowered role that they have. They do exercise discretion and give them that leeway, if you like. It is difficult, Joanna, because so much of that workforce has gone now and we have a whole cohort of new managers, new supervisors, who are both learning their professional area of work and developing their management area of work. We are trying really hard across councils to bolster those managers to be more confident in how they carry out those conversations with individuals. The health and social care integration has been mentioned to us as a possible factor for increasing sickness rates. Does anybody get any evidence or comments to make that? If it is the case, why? You need to think about the services that are in scope in the health and social care partnership. It is in those traditional sectors where there is a lot of manual lifting, handling or 24-7 type shift arrangements for the staff involved. Typically, they have had higher absence rates. That would have been the same, irrespective of being within the council or within the health and social care partnership. Having said that, we have had a particular issue in Clackmannanshire where there were high sickness absence levels, particularly in the staff group that did not transfer. We are delivering services on behalf of the health and social care partnership. We have supported the management staff in the health and social care partnership. By getting the support to properly deploy the policies, they have had a significant success in bringing down the sickness absence. However, it requires all the things that we have been talking about this morning. It is not about taking a punitive approach, it is about getting the understanding and having the right managerial approach to deal with that, because those are very demanding roles that people are carrying out in those particular areas of service delivery. Is there anybody else who has any comments on that one? If I use an example from Dundee City Council, it used to have managers dealing with sickness absence, which was long-term in particular, but it would always be a manager in HR. There is no longer HR presence at any of these meetings now, so I am just done by the phone. That support for that manager has changed. The knowledge and expertise of the management has changed dramatically over the years, because most of the ones that have the 10, 20 or 30-year experience have taken packages to go and retire through restructuring. There is a large group of new managers in place. In the same council this week, you may have seen some of the press, but they are looking at home carers having to start doing split shifts. One of our home carers, who is a single mum, had to set the councillors on Monday night. With this proposal, I will have to find childcare for my daughter 144 nights a year, as opposed to the moment that I do not have to do any, because I can work around it. How am I going to fit around that? It is going to cost me money, and the councillor's answer is, well, you can reduce your working hours, so she will lose £3,000 a year. That is the option that she faces. There is no possibility of flexible working, because the staff force has been cut. They have only got the bear quota. Yes, she can ask for flexible working, but business needs can't accommodate that, or we can cut your hours. Then she is left with that choice. I would imagine that those kinds of issues are mirrored across health and social care. I am just using Dundee as the most recent example. I am sure that they will be delighted. There are many issues involved, and we have discussed many of them. In any organisation, the responsibility for management comes from the very top down. The chief executive, all the directors are all pretty well remunerated, and then the managers and so forth. My question is, if there is nothing to be done, there are a lot of things to be done that can improve the management, starting from the chief executive taking more responsibility for this. Is that something that people would agree with? I completely agree with that. I hope that that has come across this morning, because to me that is a big part of this. If you have the right philosophy or the right leadership style across the organisation, it makes a significant difference about how people feel when they are coming to the work. Getting to the place where people feel motivated and empowered within the organisation is something that we aspire to. I am working quite hard to establish a new management group just now. Those sorts of things are things that we are discussing quite a lot. I absolutely agree with the comments that union colleagues have made about that there is a lot of pressure in the system. I am very clear that, in CLACs, we have predominantly local workforce who are the staff of the council. We have an incredibly committed bunch of people that work for the council. I value their contribution highly, as do my colleagues in the management group. We need to make sure that that is known and visible, and we do as much as we can to support it. Alongside that, at the end of the day, we also have to run the business. There is a balance to be struck. I do not say that in any way of any mitigation, because I heard the comments that Drew just made, but we cannot always do everything for everybody. If you have created the right environment, it will go a long way towards helping people to feel that they want to come to the work and to continue to make their contribution. I would not want that to be at the expense of present-dayism, which we have discussed. That is something that we have been tackling. We are sending a few people home when they are clearly quite ill. Liam McLean. The point is well made that management style cannot have an effect. I have seen this throughout my career. I was convener once, I believe it or not, a union rep in a previous workplace. I have seen good and bad practices from managers, and it does have an effect on absenteeism. Annabelle Ewing asked the pertinent question, what does Solace do? I would ask the question, what does the improvement service do? My understanding is that we asked them along to this session, thinking that they may have been about improving things and that they did not think that it was appropriate to come or that they were not here. I just wonder what the people around the table think, whether they think that there is a role for them in this. Sharon, you wanted to come in, but there will be other answers as well. If I perhaps try to comment on that particular point, I will add the additional bit to what Nicky just said. We had suggested to those who were involved in pooling together witnesses to give evidence at this committee that the improvement service might have a role to play. That suggestion came through from the Society of Personnel and Development. The reason for making that suggestion was in the context that we were fairly clear that you would be looking at the recent benchmarking report, which was just published a couple of weeks ago. They obviously have a key role in the production of that report and in writing that report. Therefore, we had thought that there might be an opportunity for some questions to be directed to the improvement service in that context. They obviously have the overview role in working with councils to capture the statutory performance indicator information and to condense that into the information that you have before you. That was the reason that we had suggested that they perhaps could add some value to the discussion today. One of the earlier discussions that we had at this meeting right at the very beginning was around the data and how it is captured and the definition of the data and how well that is applied. I think that that would have most definitely been an area for them to come in and comment on. That was where the suggestion came from. You wanted to comment previous. It was just to pick up on what Nicky was saying into the commitment that is there through Solace in the body of the chief executives. I think that the evidence that we have as councils, and speaking on behalf of councils around the table as well as those who are not, is that there is a strong strategic commitment from chief executives. They really do value the importance and the benefits of a healthy organisation and they push that down into the organisation. Some of that is directed at HR to take a lead on and some of that is directed at the organisation as a whole, at managers, at leaders to cascade and embed that into the organisation. What we are striving to do is to ensure that managers act as good role models. We are all doing that with different approaches but with a great degree of commonality as well. Good workplace culture is respected and valued as something that should be embedded into the organisation alongside work-life balance for everyone, no matter what job they do and level they are at in the organisation. There is a great role to ensure that line managers are aware that supporting employees in that regard. Health and wellbeing is a key part of the job that they do. We need to encourage managers to recognise and to seek support if it is not being offered when they recognise that they have competency issues in that space so that we can find ways to support them. That probably picks up on a few comments. I am not saying that we have all the answers but we do recognise that it is a strategic imperative to turn the absence figures around and our focus is definitely on embedding that into the organisation through good health and wellbeing practices. We have talked about best practice in terms of local authorities sharing what they do well with other local authorities. I am just wondering what local authorities do within their organisations to share best practice. I remember many years ago, when I was in the education committee, we did some work and we noticed that the difference in education attainment between departments within the same school was often much wider than it was from school to school or even from authority to authority. If our local authority colleagues here have an issue with a particular department, for example C absenteeism is stupid and high and the rest, how would you tackle something like that specifically because you may have a different work culture in one area of the local authority relative to the others and it is how you change the culture within a specific department to be able to impact positively on the whole? I think that that is a really good question because I actually do not think that there is a single solution. I think that it depends very much on the circumstances that you are looking at. I can give you a couple of examples from CLACs. We had a continuing increase in the housing service over a period of time. I had had several discussions with the head of service about that. They were deploying all the policies in his view effectively. They were trying to make all the correct interventions. We looked externally and we had some external experts look at a selection of cases to look at the interventions that could have been made at different points. Actually, what their conclusions demonstrated—this all came back into our senior team so that we were all reviewing the opportunity for shared learning on that too. The very clear message that came back was probably a lack of confidence among some of the managers in that service to be able to deploy the right interventions at the right points relative to the particular cases that had been looked at. That was one example where we took that particular intervention. What happened to the consequence of that was that learning was taken back into the service and absences in that service improved considerably relative to other sections within the council now. Another example is within our development and environment service. You will appreciate that. That is a large collection of discrete services that are provided from there. One of the issues there has been to do with change, an organisational redesign, where we have a number of managerial vacancies. What we are finding is that more junior staff are needing to step up and take responsibility for the sort of things that perhaps more senior or experienced managers have done in the past. What the director has done in that case is that he has convened or created an extension to his regular engagements with Treginian and the managers. They actually look in more detail at some of the reasons for absence. What Treginian is trying to do is work in partnership with Treginian colleagues to look at how they can manage those absences across the service. We are very conscious that Treginian colleagues can be incredibly helpful, particularly in areas such as development and environment, where there is a high membership, to reinforce some of the policy practice that we want to see, even if it is away from absence, including things such as health and safety. That is another very important theme in that area. There are different approaches that you can take depending on the particular issues that you are looking at. Those are just a couple of examples for us. It was just specifically on that point. I think that there is a huge role for the Treginians to play within councils in terms of understanding the differences that exist and perhaps helping to address them. The reason for that is that we very often spot trends within councils sooner than the local authorities themselves. The reason for that is that we tend to get more members coming to us seeking support at attendance review meetings or disciplinary meetings. We can see the numbers going up and the departments that it is taking place in, and we can spot trends in approach. Very often, we will either have conversations with managers in those departments or with HR or raise that more formally where it is appropriate to do. That is about trying to ensure that there is support to ensure that the culture is a supportive one and that, where we see, managers are needing a bit of training or development, that that is provided to them. I want to follow up the question about management, because it has been observed by the improvement service that some councils, their HR services are still very corporate and provide a central function, whereas others, the HR function has been rolled out to managers more. I wonder whether that is a recent trend and what impact it might have had. I think that that does matter. If you look across councils, I know that you have a range of data before you today showing the picture across councils over the years in terms of their ups and downs in relation to their reported figures. Evidence would show that where a more concentrated effort is in place through HR, generally speaking, absence levels will be lower. Where that support is not in place, generally, absence levels will tend to be higher. That also emphasises the need for us to ensure that, where that concentrated HR support is not in place, we need to ensure that the managers who are charged with managing absence and doing much more of it on their own without that dedicated support are equipped to do so, that they are skilled, that they are competent, that they understand the importance of that relationship between them and the person who is suffering from an illness or a particular condition. I do not think that there has ever been a fully worked-through piece of research on that, but anecdotically, if you went across councils, you would find that that was the picture. Trade unions might also support that particular position. Paul, do you want to come in? I suppose just in terms of my experience. I am obviously working in East Ayrshire now, but I have been working in larger councils. The size of East Ayrshire Council and the whole corporate mass and the employees could be the size of a service, for example, Glasgow but in the larger local authorities. From my perspective, we have a corporate HR function that services the council. That provides me with the opportunity to make sure that we have as far as possible a consistent practice and not having to pull in outline managers or HR professionals to ensure that our policies are being implemented correctly. That model works in that we can allocate resources to service areas. We talked about demands, peaks and issues in particular services. I have at my disposal resources that I can allocate to look at particular interventions in particular areas. That is because I have a central or a corporate HR function. For my authority, I would argue that that works well. It may not be the case where we have much larger authorities. Stuart McMillan, you want to come in? For me, there are some basic hygiene factors that are quite important. Beyond perhaps some of the more leadership development processes, in my role as a director, quite often I will be the person that is chairing the capability hearing or the disciplinary hearing. Quite often, when you are sitting there and you are listening to the evidence for both parties, what comes back to you is that, a couple of years ago, a conversation could have stopped this source. To me, a lot of it comes back time and time again to having a relationship with employees and having systematic processes in place so that you can have dialogue and discussions. I know that it seems really simple and straightforward, but quite often the relationships and having that relationship is fundamental. It is just basic things. Does the employee have a performance review and development, meaning at least once a year? Do they understand how they fit in the context of the organisation? Does the organisation value their place in whatever respect of their role? Do they know who you are as the manager? Do they know where to come? Do they know that, at least on a monthly basis, they are going to have a one-to-one discussion with you so that you can resolve any issues? I have monthly meetings with my managers. The first item on the agenda is always out turns and budgets and savings. That is just the way of the world. The second item on the agenda is attendance. We have discussions about how attendance is managed. I know every case within my directorate in terms of the long term. I know whether the triggers have been met. I know what support mechanisms are in place. It is a bit like the plan-do-check act. You have to check that your managers are doing the basics. Beyond lots of the things that we are doing, four years ago, if you ask me, did we have the right suite of policies? Were they in line with best practice? I would have said no. I think that now we are getting there but we still have lessons to learn. We are deploying lots of those nows. However, there is an element in just making sure that things are getting done. The basics are getting done and that there are basic relationships there. That is a role of a manager to check that that is happening. The employee has a safe place to go if they are having an issue and you can resolve it early. You talked about relationships. I am just wondering whether councils are still quite traditional hierarchical places with managers, bosses and employees. Is there any experience of doing work differently? If you look at the private sector, if you look at co-ops and mutuals and employee-owned companies, they have much better work satisfaction, they have much less absenteeism, etc. Are there different ways of people working in services that can help to reduce absenteeism? I think that Nicky alluded to that. I think that there is an element of visibility. A member years ago, when I first started working in local government, the directors were gods. He did not go anywhere near the director's office. They were absolute gods. There were a wall of PA's around them and they did not get anywhere near them. I think that now, as a director, it is a completely different culture. People are generally expected to be more approachable. I think that there are things that you can do, making sure that you are available, that your door is open, that you go round the office and say hello to people and engage with them and ensure that your managers are doing that as well. I do not think that it is rocket science. I would just come back to it. It is about relationships and being human. We have all suffered bereavements. We have all gone through various life events. It is just understanding that, when it comes to your turn, you expect to be treated in the same way that you would treat others. There is a part of that relationship with that conversation that we need to promote. It is about making sure that our employees know that it is okay to talk to their managers. Sometimes we have cultures where I cannot talk to a manager about that. We need to embed that with organisations. That is a two-way conversation. I think that the part about doing things differently. I would like to think—we are looking at this in small pockets of our council now—that, by empowering our workforce more, there is a bigger sense of ownership and commitment. With that comes a much better employee-manager-counsel relationship. That is ultimately about how we respond to our communities. We are trying to roll some of those models out into that. I am not suggesting that employees do not, because we have a very hard-working and committed employee. If we can push that a bit further to say that you are absolutely embedded in what is happening within your communities, you are critical to the success of your communities, you are valued within your communities. I think that that will very much add to embedding that culture of value. We need to push that as far as we can to make sure that people understand. There is a sense—we look at this in terms of developing a wellbeing culture—that for employees, managers and trade unions, there is a tendency that sometimes you leave your home person at home and a different being comes into the workplace. We all are, I would hope to think—I like to think—caring the employees or people who have got husbands by their partners' kids. We do that at home. Sometimes we leave it at home, so if we treat each other the way we treat your own family, friends and siblings, that would embed some of that wellbeing culture. I think that part of the management role is to create the space for that creativity and those different things to happen. I do not think that the traditional local government structures have been the place for that. I think that that is changing. My experience now is with things that I am looking at that need a little bit of investment before staff feel comfortable in that space or feel that it is okay to come up with different ways of doing things. I want to create a forum of more middle-tier managers that was around promoting change, empowering the managers to be part of the leadership of the organisation. We found that the skills are not consistently there to be able to engage in that discussion, so we are investing in that first to create the capacity so that they can fully participate in that. I think that it does not matter what grade you are in the organisation, I think that those principles are probably something that we will keep coming back to, but I think that the needs to be the management will to create that space in the first place. Just to come back on that and something that Stewart said earlier about the relationship between the employee and their manager, it is absolutely crucial, and Stewart is right when he says that some of the fundamentals need to be there, regular dialogue, performance, review, discussions, one-to-one meetings, etc. One thing that I would impress on the committee is that those things are all very well if you are talking about a workforce that works in an office, you pass your manager's desk on a daily basis, you say hello, all the rest of it. A huge number of members that we represent are the types of people that Drew mentioned earlier, who are on split shifts, who are out on the front line, care workers who receive text messages to tell them where to go and visit. That is not a text message telling you where to go, it is not a relationship with your manager. Those individuals very often do not see their managers for days and weeks on end. Something about that, nature of that work has to change in order to ensure that there is that space and time created in the employment relationship to have that sort of dialogue. Some areas do it better than others, but there is an issue about the nature of some of the work, so that has to be a consideration. I have got a substantive question, but I just want to double check something that Joanna said right at the start, because I did not quite catch it. You were talking about that you have done FOIs across councils and some of them did not keep the information but did not quite pick up what it was about. In relation to, if you ask for freedom of information requests from councils as to how many staff have been taken through absent management procedures, that is where they have gone through trigger processes and they have had absence management discussions and or punitive interventions such as disciplinary hearings as a result of their absence. A significant number of councils claim that they do not hold a figure on how many members of staff have been taken through absent management processes and the ones that I specifically mentioned were Midlothian, Aberdeenshire, Argyll and Bute and Weston Bartonshire. That is a concern if there are councils that do not hold that information, because they certainly should hold that information. I would assume that that information would exist somewhere but they claim that it is not held essentially. To me it would say that the HR department is not collating that information. It would certainly have to be held. I would assume by line managers and departmental managers, for example. I find it surprising that councils HR departments are not holding that essentially. I assume that Mr Duffy is keen to come in, but I have another question. Just to give an example of Aberdeenshire, we are in almost dispute with them just now about the PSAs that I was talking about, the PIL supports. Of the number of external reports that our members and staff have submitted, we asked Aberdeenshire what is the breakdown of that, what are they, and they said we do not know. It would cost us £1,800 to find that out, so they have refused our request because they have said that is too much. That is people's health and safety, we are talking about. People are being bit, spacked, £1,800 a council is not unreasonable. The sum is very reluctant to share some of this. It is helpful for us to hear this but today. That is really helpful. My other question is that there is a big difference between the absence rates for teachers, which is running on average about six days a year, and non-teachers, which is just over 11 days a year. Why do you think that is? I cannot comment on what is happening within the teaching profession because obviously we do not represent teachers. However, I would go back to the point that I made just earlier, which is about the nature of work. The nature of the work that some of our members are doing is right on the front line, out in the field, on a daily basis, split shift. Many of our members have multiple contracts of employment with their local authorities, so they will be contracted to do perhaps 12 hours as a home care worker and perhaps 8 hours as a cleaner in a local school, for example. If you only looked at the numbers that are contracted as cleaners in schools or as home carers, you would get a misrepresentation of what is happening on the ground because it does not take into consideration that some of those people are doing both of those jobs on a daily and weekly basis. There is an issue about the nature of work and some of the different pressures that exist within council staff that we have rehearsed earlier in the session. There was a comment earlier in relation to teachers' absence, and I made the point that teachers' absence was increasing. I know that it is not increasing in terms of the figures that are reported, but the feedback that is coming through from the teaching trade unions is that there is more evidence of stress, anxiety and workload pressures within schools. The teaching trade unions, the EIS in particular, have done a survey similar to some of the other trade unions that are represented around the table. I think that they will be bringing their evidence to the table quite soon to show that there is a slow creep in teachers' absence. It might not be showing a reported increase in absence in terms of the SPI itself, but as well as PSAs and everyone else who works in a school, there is a sense that there is a lot of pressure in schools just now, and that may ultimately result in some increases in teacher absence. At the moment, picking up on some of the points from the trade unions as well, there is a degree of presenteeism and people not necessarily taking time out of the system, but I think that it is something to watch. The presenteeism is when people who are feeling under par under the weather in terms of their health turn up for work because they sometimes fear the consequences of not being at work or they feel they are unable to report as sick. The sense of duty is well, so people just don't take time off work. Why would it be the snow criticism of Emdy? I'm not sure that that explains the difference. Two things I would say, but surely most of the workers have got a sense of duty and sense of responsibility to get to their work. The other is that, if the figures that we've got are not telling us the facts, you're saying anecdotally, that you're hearing that there's more teachers off, then what are the points of the figures that we've got? I'm not saying anecdotally that I'm hearing that more teachers are off. What I'm hearing is that more teachers are struggling from the pressures of work. It's shown that you're hearing that the figures are higher than what we've got here. That's what you said. No, I'm sorry if that's how it came across. What I'm saying is that, within the teaching workforce, there is being reported nationally through predominantly the teaching trade unions that there is a growing pressure within schools. Teachers are coping with additional workloads, the pressures of some of the situations that they're in. Violence and aggression has been previously mentioned in relation to PSAs. There's more reported incidents of violence and aggression in relation to teachers, and that's not always following through in teacher absences whereas perhaps in local government you're saying a higher presence of that. Within the reported SPI figures that we've got for 17-18, although the figures are good in relation to teachers on a comparative scale compared to local government workers, 15 out of 32 councils did report a slight increase in teachers absences. That's not more than half, but it's still a significant number and something perhaps to pay attention to. It still leaves a huge gap between teachers and non-teachers. That's a point that Graham is trying to get to. Sharon, you used the word presenteeism and you seem to be suggesting that teachers perhaps have a different attitude towards taking time off than non-teachers. That was the implication of what you were saying. What I was trying to do is to perhaps explain to you why there is such a gap. I don't know if that's the answer but perhaps it could be because there is quite a stark difference in the figures and yet it's a local government workforce that we're talking about and dealing with. I don't know if that's perhaps an underlying reason in terms of the difference in figures. It might be something that is worth exploring but I do know that outside of the context of the reported figures, through the teaching trade unions, there is much being reported on the pressures existing in schools around those areas that I have already mentioned. I don't know if I've necessarily got an answer but when we look at our teaching age profile, non-teaching age profile, it's predominantly 45 to 59 but when we look at our teacher age profile, it's predominantly below the age of 44 so there is quite a marked difference in terms of the age profile. That's very helpful, Joanna. Do you want to come in? Let's come back briefly on the point about presentiaism. Presentiaism exists within the non-teaching local government workforce as well. I don't believe that that explains the difference at all. I think that it is much more to do with demographics and the nature of work in terms of people having a static place of work, more regularised hours, less short-term contracts for example. I think that you're comparing two very different groups of people. If you took out teaching staff of local government, predominantly local government workers are low-paid, part-time, and I've given some examples of how those workers don't feel valued as much as the teaching staff. There is sometimes a conflict between the two groups of workers, even though they are the same employer. That's pretty well known. They have more favourable terms and conditions as well. Does that create a conflict even within the same workplace? First of all, the figures that we have from the local government benchmarking framework are not anecdotal. My wife was a teacher for 23 years and has security of employment once she has a permanent contract. I think that that might make a significant difference in that. I think that one of the things in terms of general figures with regard to the wider local government workforce is that people have breakdowns per four departments to see what the difference, for example, is with care workers as opposed to those who work in housing or libraries, whatever it happens to be. I think that that would be quite useful because then we would see more of where the pressures truly lie in terms of individual workers and what they face. I think that we still get back to the fundamental point, which is that, even looking simply at the non-teacher and school-related stats, on the basis that it has been accepted that local authorities go about the collation of those in different ways, notwithstanding there being some overarching policy that is supposed to be followed. The application of that is clearly different, as we have heard, even as between East Ayrshire and Clack. I just have a wee bit of a reservation about reaching too many conclusions on the basis of statistics that are not necessarily collated on exactly the same basis from a statistical point of view. That then begs the question, how would the teacher stats be collected in terms of any comparison being worthy of its salt as between teaching and non-teaching staff? The last point that I would make is simply this. I think that there needs to be a far greater impetus on the part of Solis and Cosla on addressing some of those issues because we are talking about people's lives. Things could be done, notwithstanding budget issues, and I can say to Drew well that the Scottish Government budget has been slashed by £2 billion in 2010. We can have that stale budget discussion if you want, but the bottom line is that a lot can be done now. I just feel that there is just this kind of drift going on, and it is somebody else's, and there is this person saying that these are the best practice principles, but actually things could be done. I hope that, instead of Solis working across however many work streams with this as a kind of element of the issue being looked at, why don't you make this the issue and have a particular focus on this? Then you could immediately make differences to the working lives of so many thousands of people across Scotland. First, in terms of Mr Gibson's comment, your comment about getting into the detail of the individual service areas is absolutely spot on. That is the way that we use that as a can opener for looking at trying to understand the reasons for absence and then think about what the strategy is for dealing with it might be, so I think that point is really important. In terms of Solis, I apologise if I have underplayed the work that Solis has done, because I know that it has been a significant theme over a long number of years. I am just thinking about the policy priorities that are there just now. It is probably a recurrent theme, but I am very happy to take that message back through Solis and reflect on the experience with the committee. I really want to just back up what Annabelle Ewing just said. Over the years, I think that this whole issue has always been an acceptance in local government that these are the figures. It is almost like a collective shrug of the shoulders from councils that will do what we can, but that is the way it is. As Annabelle Ewing said, if you tackle it, you improve lives. If you tackle it, you can save money, but you are not having to employ people to fill the gaps. That then has an impact on the stress of the existing workforce. It really should be a priority and it never has been. That is why we are having this session. I would probably just like to reaffirm that it is an absolute priority for councils in terms of a range of priorities that they are challenged with. It has been on the agenda for many, many years, as Mr Simpson says, and it is not a shrug of the shoulders when we look at what the outcome is. We are very, very focused on improving our attendance levels, but we are also very focused on helping improve the health and the wellbeing of our workforce. I know that the figures perhaps do not evidence that, but despite very many, very many best efforts, those are the figures. There is an awful lot of work that goes on in councils on all of the things that we have been talking about to support that position. I just wanted to mention two things. The first is that Solace took the lead, you might remember, not that many years ago in terms of doing a considerable amount of work to refine the approach to performance information across Scotland, across a lot of Scottish local authorities. That work was led by Ronnie Hines when he was chair of the Solace branch. I think that a lot of the issues that have come up today about the comparability of the measures, I think that that will be something that would be useful to be explored in the same way as a kind of further refinement of that original work. I completely agree with Mr Simpson's comments about the value of sickness absence, and I think that one of the things that I was really keen to stress to the committee today is from Clack's point of view, this is a huge priority for us because we recognise where we sit in the performance table. It is not just because of that, it is about the philosophy that I would want to promote in the council. The staff resource, the people that work for the council deliver a huge contribution locally. They need to feel like a valued part of the organisation. With that comes all the things that we have been talking about this morning in terms of the requirements for support and so on. I think that the benefit that we then get in return for that is exactly the point that Mr Simpson made, which is that you have financial benefits as well as qualitative benefits that flow through for the council and the area. Thank you very much. I think that that probably brings us to a natural conclusion for this meeting today. Unless anybody has got any final important comments to make, then I am just going to thank you all for attending the evidence session today. The committee will discuss the evidence that is heard today in private at the next agenda item and decide any further action we might wish to take. Thank you all for your attendance today. That was a very useful session. That concludes the public part of today's meeting and I move the meeting into private.