Jersey’s Health Department is seeing a high number of staff off sick with anxiety or stress, with 761 mental health-related absences in 2024.
Health lost 35,317.1 sickness days in 2024 – an average of 13.6 days per employee.
The top cause of absence were colds, coughs, and flus, with 1,650 instances. This was followed by 953 instances of gastrointestinal problems and 761 instances of anxiety and stress.
The high level of sickness leave is currently being reviewed by Health’s new Director of Workforce, Ian Tegerdine.
The board which oversees Health heard last week that 2024’s levels were a rise on the prior year, when Health staff took an average of 10.9 days off.
However, Mr Tegerdine explained that it was not clear if the increase in numbers was due to sickness getting worse or because departments were getting better at reporting absences – with some teams not having reported sickness properly in the past.
“We have discovered a number of problems that we have solved, which mean that sickness is being better reported,” he said.
But that doesn’t mean that Health is being complacent about the current level of illness-related absence, the Health Advisory Board heard.
With anxiety and stress high on the list, Non-Executive Director Carolyn Downs noted: “That’s something we should be able to do something about.
“Everybody in this room should be able to do something.”
Non-Executive Health Advisory Board Director Dame Clare Gerada suggested that there could be a culture shift in the way sickness relates to work.
She advised against staff thinking they needed to be “100% well” before coming to work, noting that work can also be beneficial for mental health.
Mr Tegederine pointed to ongoing work, for example around how to improve take-up of wellbeing resources.
More illness… but improving morale?
More positive were the Department’s latest results in an annual staff survey called BeHeard, which showed that workforce morale was on the increase.
However, with 29.8% of employees responding – versus around 40% for Government as a whole – the Board warned that the results weren’t statistically significant.
Mr Tegerdine said: “We achieved quite a low rate of return, which is disappointing. We want to improve.”
Of those who did respond, 75% said they felt able to escalate concerns about patients or service users.
Mr Tegerdine added: “In pretty much all of those domains, we have improved from last year. Now I don’t want to sound complacent… But actually, we’re going in the right direction.”
But some areas still see low scores.
29% felt the Health Department treated those involved in errors, near-misses or incidents fairly, and 35% agreed that “if I spoke up about something that concerned me, I am confident HCS would address my concern”.
Ms Downs commented that there remained “growings to do”, for example with turnover rates, and that a “heatmap” currently in development would highlight the parts of the department that are still having problems.
The department also scored badly in the “friends and family test”.
42% of respondents agreed that “if a friend or relative needed treatment, I would be happy with the standard of care provided by HCS”.
Mr Tegerdine said the department needs to do more work to understand this result.
Health has had very poor results in in the past – with high numbers taking time off for stress or anxiety, “worryingly low” workforce morale, and questions over whether bullying and harassment policies were being followed.
In 2021, the department was found to be of particular concern, with mostly negative assessments of managers and reports that power struggles stopped staff from reporting bullying and harassment.
One staff member wrote: “Staff will not report bullying and harassment for fear of losing their job or for the victimisation to get worse… There are numerous consultants, nurses and allied health professionals taking time off sick as they cannot face coming to the workplace for fear of being bullied.”
Between March and August 2019, 27% of the sickness days taken by employees within Health and Community Services department were related to anxiety, stress or depression, which was by far the largest reason for time off due to illness.
This rose to 35% for the same period of 2020, and in August 2020, 43% of sickness days taken in HCS were due to anxiety, stress or depression.
In 2022, a report by Hugo Mascie-Taylor found serious issues with governance and culture at the Hospital.
Chris Bown, who was brought in to lead the Change Team – and then served as interim Chief Officer for Health between 2023 and the end of 2024, pledged to make culture change his main focus.
He said at the time: “There is clearly a need to improve the culture of the organisation – that is well known.”
“The need to ensure that staff are listened to, that they feel valued and engaged is important because we know – and there is plenty of evidence which suggests this – that poor morale has a negative impact on patient care and it is therefore critical that we improve the culture of our organisation.”
He added that “morale needs to improve” and that “Jersey has been subject to a number of critical reports [and] those issues have to be addressed”.