Boosting wellbeing and attendance in partnership

Overview

Against a backdrop of high sickness absence in the North West, trade union colleagues and managers wanted to do more to support staff wellbeing, and a new wellbeing and attendance management policy was co-developed for the region. The policy shifted the emphasis from a punitive and rigid 'trigger' sickness management process to a person-centred approach. In January 2024, the policy was implemented in partnership by the Northern Care Alliance NHS Foundation Trust (NCA). The trust is already beginning to see improvements in sickness absence rates and key NHS Staff Survey wellbeing scores.

The issue faced

Employers and trade unions recognised:

• Sickness rates in the North West are the highest in the country, along with poorer population health.
• Despite the existing policies, sickness rates continued to rise.
• Evidence shows there is a correlation between improving colleagues’ wellbeing, their experience at work and better outcomes for patients.
• The region needed to shift its focus to the holistic wellbeing of staff.

The actions taken

The new policy was co-created in partnership from the onset and began as a blank piece of paper. Colleagues were invited to a ‘social club’ and asked to offer initial suggestions on how wellbeing might be improved among staff in the North West. 

A task and finish group was established including trade union and employer representation. The group met monthly with additional extended workshops to agree the new policy line-by-line. Trade union reps communicated progress throughout via their internal structures and fed in views from colleagues. 

The NCA’s colleague experience group, which includes employer and trade union representation and senior leaders, was also consulted. The draft policy was then presented, in partnership, to the NCA board. 

The comms campaign for the new policy, which was spearheaded by both employers and trade unions, began six to eight months prior to launch. After the launch, a partnership oversight group was established and tasked by trade union reps to measure impact. This included sending questionnaires to people returning from sickness absence and to trade union reps, HR colleagues and managers, and monitoring monthly sickness data. 

The surveys received nearly a thousand responses and informed an action plan to further improve the policy and develop supporting resources. Training for the new policy was co-created and co-delivered by HR and trade union colleagues, and a video promoting the policy was developed featuring two trade union reps.

A North West Community of Practice (COP) was established. This was delivered by an external consultancy and included NCA, Tameside and Glossop, East Lancashire and Bridgewater NHS trusts and their trade union teams. The COP created a toolkit to support other trusts to implement the policy, with an emphasis on the importance of partnership working and co-development. This was turned into a flipbook through the NHS Leadership Academy. 

Results and benefits

• Following an initial increase in sickness absence, recent data indicates a more positive trend, with August 2025 recording the lowest sickness absence rate since March 2024.
• The NHS Staff Survey score in NCA for ‘my immediate manager takes a positive interest in my health and wellbeing’ increased from 68.7 per cent (2023) to 70.2 per cent (2024), and the score for staff feeling pressure from their manager to work dropped from 20.5 per cent (2023) to 19.2 per cent (2024).
• Co-developing the policy with trade unions has meant employers and trade unions are on the same page and understand the reasoning behind every line of the policy.

Social partnership working: lessons learnt

• Although co-developing the new policy from the onset took considerable time, the benefits to the developmental process, time taken to ratification, how the policy landed and monitoring greatly outweighed this.
• Communicating the new policy effectively and in partnership was key to ensuring colleagues felt supported and invested.
• There is no need to reinvent wheel, so learn from what is working well and what is not working.

Summary

• The new policy, co-developed in partnership, has resulted in a real improvement in wellbeing and sickness absence at NCA.
• Working in partnership was a game changer in how the policy landed and was embedded.
• Other NHS trusts have expressed an interest in the North West’s partnership approach to wellbeing and sickness absence and policy development. 

Further information

For more information on this project, contact Sharon Lord, health and wellbeing lead at NCA.