Absenteeism still an issue at Frontenac County

Jeff Green | Mar 31, 2016

It has been a number of years since absenteeism among paramedics at Frontenac Paramedic Services and both nursing and non-nursing staff at Fairmount Home was flagged as above the industry targets for those sectors.

The County's human resources staff have been gathering data on absenteeism ever since, in an effort to determine if absenteeism mitigation efforts have had an effect. The latest rolling average suggests that Fairmount Home staff are still off sick more often than the target, which for nursing staff is 10 days or less off sick per year for 80% of employees and for non-nursing staff is 7 days off sick per year for 80% of employees. 67%% of nursing staff and 71.5% of non-nursing staff met the target. The 67% figure for nursing staff represents an improvement over the 64% figure from the previous period, but for non-nursing staff it represents a drop from the previous period, when 86% of staff met the target.

As for paramedics working for Frontenac Paramedic Services, who have a target of 12 sick days for 80% of employees, the numbers continue to lag. Only 58% of paramedics met the target, down from 65% the last time around.

In presenting the numbers to a meeting of Frontenac County Council a couple of weeks ago, CAO Kelly Pender said that specific circumstances, such as a flu outbreak that sent a number of paramedics home in the middle of their shifts last December and lasted three to four more days in most cases, “had a significant impact on the statistics”.

For their part, Frontenac County politicians wondered what they can do with the numbers.

“I'm not sure what these numbers are telling us,” said Councillor John Inglis.

Measures taken to mitigate against sick time have had mixed success. After paramedics were approached to discuss sick time last May, 12 paramedics launched grievances that are now in arbitration.