“Bullied” Liverpool council staff go on sick
Dec 1 2008 by Ben Schofield, Liverpool Daily Post
Municipal Buildings on Dale Street, Liverpool _220
“They need a better policy in relation to bullying and harassment. Managers should be trained to deal more adequately with people.”
She said Liverpool City Council would come “quite low down” in a rundown of how Merseyside employers dealt with bullying.
According to Mrs Blundell, the council are about to finalise a new policy on dealing with stress. “It’s been in the making for years,” she continued. “We’ve been there before and never got one.
“Managers aren’t trained to deal with people with stress.”
Referring to the numbers signing off sick, a council spokesman said 2,602 individuals may not have signed off sick.
He said: “This figure is the number of incidences of sickness and not the number of staff, and includes occasions when people were off due to stress at home. Many of our staff have to deal with very highly pressurised situations, for example, social workers, teachers and people on the front line dealing with members of the public.
“The city council offers a range of help and support to staff in managing stress. This includes a confidential counselling service and access to a free, independent well-being hotline to give support on a range of issues such as stress, work-life balance and coping with change. We have carried out research to identify the scale of the problem and a conference for front line staff in social care is planned in the near future focusing on health and wellbeing.
“Any complaint made about bullying is taken extremely seriously and thoroughly investigated.”
Commenting on the numbers of employees signing off with stress, Mrs Blundell added: “That doesn’t surprise me, but I think there’s a lot of people trying to come to work and aren’t disclosing they’re suffering with stress.”
But she added: “We have a new administrative executive at the top and they’re striving to change the culture of the city.”
The behaviour of elected members also causes concern, she said. “I don’t think elected members portray the type of behaviour and relationship with people that they work with that gives a good example for the employees.”
How the figures were revealed
THE figures were released after a member of the public made a Freedom of Information request.
Stephen Gradwick used democracy website www.whatdotheyknow.com to submit the enquiry.
The original request, all letters and emails and the council's response can be found at http://bit.ly/14Xm6
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