News roundup: Sick leave, engagement, apprenticeships

10 February 2012

With the annual absence management headache of “National Sickie Day” kick starting the week, we were more encouraged as the week progressed to hear positive soundings about employee engagement and read some inspirational stories as part of National Apprenticeship Week.

If we're honest, most of us have pulled a “sickie”. In fact, the first Monday in February is now officially dubbed “National Sickie Day” when staff are most likely to take an unofficial day off. So catching our eye in the office on Monday were the top ten excuses for taking a sickie by careers expert Judi James.

Of course, short-term sickness absence can be symptomatic of other underlying issues – such as stress and a lack of engagement – so it was encouraging to hear employee engagement have its profile raised in particular this week.

Nita Clarke, CIPD vice-president and deputy chair of the Employee Engagement Taskforce, told People Management that engaging staff is vital: “In organisations that respect staff as an asset there is much more dialogue and transparency, and bad behaviours – whether by managers or staff – do not go unchallenged,” she said.

Speaking to People Management nearly a year on from the launch of the government-backed taskforce, Clarke also said employee engagement had moved up the business agenda since the MacLeod Review in 2009 and become a much more “salient” issue.

And with National Apprenticeship Week ending today, we’ve keenly followed the campaign this week via Twitter and were pleased to read about the apprentices’ “Hall of Fame” including the oldest entry, George Matthey, who completed his apprenticeship in 1838!

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