Testimonial

The District Council provides numerous services to Bassetlaw residents including refuse collection, recycling, planning and business support, Environmental Health, Sports Development and, Parks and Open Spaces.  Overall the council employs approximately 460 staff.

Bassetlaw needed to better understand absence trends and focus resource on, ‘persistent problem areas,’ within the council.  Due to the dispersed workforce, sickness absence was not always recorded consistently with some instances of short term sickness absence being under reported.  As a consequence, management information was not held centrally and did not fully support line managers to adhere to the council’s absence policy.

Miriam Parker, HR Business Partner at Bassetlaw comments: “FirstCare introduced Bassetlaw to the concept of, ‘Day One,’ Absence Management. We could clearly see the benefits of such a service and decided to investigate ourselves internally to see what options were available. After meeting with a number of absence management providers, we identified that the FirstCare service was more advanced than others on the market and offered the best value for money.

We have not been disappointed with the results, with sickness absence being significantly reduced since the start of the service.  The central point for management information has been key to the service, allowing both HR and line managers to address complex cases.  Overall it ensures that every employee that is unwell is properly supported which is in line with the Council’s health and wellbeing strategy.”