Scottish Government workforce information 2016

Annex D. Sickness absences

D 1. Sickness absence is reported in 12 month period, ending in each quarter. The Scottish Government records all sickness absences of its directly employed workers. Sickness absences of those who left in the 12 month period are also included. Sickness absences of non-directly employed workers are not recorded.

D 2. Sickness absences are measured across a rolling year to reduce the effect of seasonal variation in the data caused by seasonal illnesses, such as influenza. However, a particularly virulent illness that caused a large number of absences in a particular quarter would show as raised sickness levels in each of the 12 month periods that contained this quarter.

D 3. Average working days lost per staff year ( AWDL) is the total number of working days lost, divided by the number of staff years. Only working days are counted, so calculations exclude weekends and public and privilege holidays from the period of sickness. A staff year takes into account part-time working and if a member of staff only worked part of a year. A full time member of staff in post for the whole year period is assigned a staff year of 1. If a part-time member of staff works half of the number of hours in a standard 37 hour week, their staff year would be 0.5. If that member of staff only worked half of the year period, for example, they were recruited part way through the period, then their staff year would be halved further, to give a staff year of 0.25.

D 4. The all absences AWDL is the average working days lost per staff year for all sickness absences, including both long and short term spells of absences. A weighting is applied to spells over 125 working days to account for annual leave not taken, and is subtracted, pro rata, from the number of days off sick. This assumes a working year of 225 days (unless a leap year) for full time staff employed for the full year period.

D 5. The short term AWDL is the average working days lost per staff year for spells of sickness absences of 20 days or less.

D 6. The long term AWDL is the average working days lost per staff year for spells of sickness absences of more than 20 days.

D 7. The percentage of working days lost is the percentage of the total number of working days lost due to sickness absences for all directly employed staff, out of the total working days available during the year for all directly employed staff. As with AWDL, this takes working patterns into account. A part time member of staff that works half the hours of standard 37 hour week, is available for half of the working days of a full time member of staff in a year period.