The Daily Echo 20 March 2008

Written by Sandra Gidley MP on Thu 20th Mar 2008

The focus at the moment seems to be on workers who are ill and therefore not able to work. There is a suggestion that doctors should be able to write "well notes", outlining what work a person is capable of, rather than the old fashioned sick note which merely signs someone off work for a defined period of time.

The idea certainly has merit but there are some obvious problems. For example, in a labour intensive occupation an employer probably couldn't cope if a large proportion of workers were signed off heavy manual duties but deemed fit for clerical duties. We couldn't allow a situation where we forced round pegs into square holes which may not even be available.

It is also rather difficult to put doctors in the position of specifying what a person can or can't do. They are trained to diagnose illness and it is probably unfair to burden them with making judgement calls on what someone can do. If the plan is to train some doctors to especially take on this task then this too is problematic. Such doctors would not know the patient as well as their own GP.

There is also the problem of people who experience a temporary mental health problem. This is something that people are reluctant to talk about or acknowledge and something that is difficult for an individual to admit to.

Some companies have made strenuous efforts to look at this problem from another perspective and allow employees more flexible working. They realise that if they support their staff through times of trouble then this will reap rewards in the long run with increased staff retention. This means lower training and recruitment costs.

It also occurred to me that there are times when people are simply overloaded and stressed. Under the current system such people burn themselves out or work until they drop. Such individuals often feel unhappy with the prospect of being off work so it has often struck me that we need to be looking at ways of balancing all of this. The doctor could sign someone off on a part time basis to allow a breathing space. It would be interesting to set up a pilot scheme to see if this reduced the number of people being permanently signed off in the long term.

Most people who have had to leave a job through ill health are keen to retrain. I am pleased that efforts are being made in this direction but it would be better if we could think of ways to retain skills in the first place.

Published with kind permission of the Daily Echo