Stuart Kirk, Betty’s News, Mawgan Porth, Cornwall
“I’ve got two full-time staff who are here all year round and another 12 seasonal staff. I used to have a smaller workforce, but you struggle to cover sickness and absence. We were struggling during Covid because people were staying in the UK instead of going abroad and we’d never seen so many people in our village.
We were struggling to cover shifts. So, I’ve restructured the way things work with staff. When I interview them, I ask them if they want to work five days a week or work three but be available to cover other shifts. That means I have more staff than I need, but most are working three or four days a week.
We have a WhatsApp group, so if someone calls in sick, we mention it on there and within an hour someone will take on the day’s work and be with us in another hour. They know they’re signing up for that from the start and it’s worked brilliantly.”
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Kevin Polley, Kash Retail, Bedale, North Yorkshire
“Our days are all planned and we have holiday request forms that have to be authorised before staff can have a holiday. We also don’t have any holidays in December in the build-up to Christmas. That means that holidays are generally quite easy to manage.
“We don’t get much staff sickness, but we deal with it with care and compassion. We help them get back to work and we look at rehabilitation into the business. So, instead of working the 20 hours you normally do, you can do eight until you feel 100%. And that’s worked well.
The best contingency plan is to look at your numbers and make sure you’ve got lots of people doing a few hours rather than a few people doing lots of hours. It gives you much more flexibility if something goes wrong. More bodies on the books and more bodies to call on in times of emergency.”
Dave Hiscutt, Londis Westham Road, Weymouth, Dorset
“We have good relationships with the staff, and have processes and procedures in place for sickness. We have a response in place to reduce it happening in the first place, which makes people think twice about whether they’re un????it for work. It’s not about forcing people to work when they’re sick, but it’s about reducing absences that aren’t necessary or are fraudulent.
We do a back-to-work interview after they’ve been sick to address it, and having that upfront conversation keeps it front of mind. Rather than a simple ‘I’m off sick today, see you tomorrow’, they know they’re being tracked properly. If you’ve got measurements, like percentage of sick hours versus their hours on the rota, that helps to reduce the amount of sickness in the business and means you’re not asking for cover all the time.
That’s key – if you keep asking the same people to cover, they’ll eventually become less responsive, which is a problem.”
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