Almost three quarters (70%) of workers have been tempted to pull a “sickie” because of the recent hot weather, according to a new survey. The survey by employment law firm Peninsula found that 80 per cent of employers reported that staff pulled “sickies” last week as a result of the good weather and the May bank holiday weekend.

A major CBI/AXA report for 2007 shows that 172 million days were lost to absence in 2007 costing the UK economy £13.2bn. The average employee took 6.7 days off sick and it is believed that as many as 21 million of these “sickies” were non-genuine. Not only do these “sickies” cost the economy, they also impact on fellow colleagues who have to shoulder the additional work burden.

As HR professionals, what can we do to halt this trend?

Believe it or not, one suggestion is to use lie detectors to detect genuine sickness absence!! This might sound like “Big Brother” watching you but it is actually under consideration. According to a recent article ‘employer groups welcomed the idea of using the Voice Risk Analysis (VRA) system to tell when staff are lying when they call in to say they are too ill to work.’

A less draconian measure is used by Kellogg’s UK office. On 9th May, they began their annual “summer hours scheme”, allowing all employees to finish work at 12pm on a Friday between May and September, provided they have completed a full week’s work. This scheme is now in its fifth year and has proved a resounding success, reducing absenteeism and raising employee morale.

Whilst this obviously works for a company like Kellogg’s, it’s not going to be a feasible solution for all businesses and that’s where you come in…

We’d like to hear your suggestions on ways to reduce non-genuine absenteeism. Remember our best BLOG contributor will be awarded a BLT Hamper!

"For the last decade or so, in the name of modernisation, rationalisation and efficiency we have been living under a regime of government by management consultant and policy by PowerPoint,” claimed David Cameron in a speech to the Campaign to Protect Rural England yesterday.

“The result,” he argued “has been an explosion of bureaucracy, cost and irritation, endless upheavals and pointless reorganisations, the elbowing aside of colourful, human, informal relationships based on common sense and trust in favour of the grey, mechanical, joyless mantras of the master planner with his calculations, projections and impact assessments….”

You can read the full story on the BBC here.

I don’t know what Microsoft thought about his dismissal of PowerPoint but I doubt that his words got many consultants in a fluster, because attacks on the use of consultants by government are nothing new (examples here , here and here.) It’s easy to see why the government spending nearly £3bn on the likes of PA, McKinsey or KPMG is less popular than spending it on paying nurses and teachers more money. It’s also easy to see why opposition politicians like David Cameron use management consultancy fees as a stick to beat the government. People find it hard to understand what a consultant does and how it benefits society and often assume they must be a waste of money compared to another teacher or a doctor.

Should we, therefore, expect scathing cutbacks on consultancy budgets if the Conservatives return to power? Should a recruiter of public sector consultants, like me, be searching for other forms of employment in the face of a frugal Tory government?

Perhaps, but I think it’s unlikely. Why? Because the skills that consultancies provide in areas like strategy, performance improvement, change management, outsourcing, etc all have to come from somewhere and hiring consultants is still less expensive than employing someone permanently. Even if an incoming Tory government implements swingeing public sector cuts (though that looks unlikely) consultants will still be needed to advise on where and how the cutbacks should be made. More fundamentally, the use of consultants fits in with the philosophy of an outsourced, efficient public sector that makes use of private sector best practice which has been at the heart of the Conservative approach since the 1988 Next Steps report and has been largely adopted by New Labour.

So, while David Cameron may make political hay out of consultancy fees now it hard to see public sector consultancy fees dropping were he to become Prime Minister. I’m sure though, that the news that PowerPoint is to be banned will bring cheers from more than just the civil service!

It is no surprise to read that money worries are a major source of stress and that in a recent treasury commissioned report, the research quoted that stress related debt problems caused 8.7 million lost working days in 2004, costing employers £497m. AXA have led the way recently calling on employers to give staff an hour every month to sort out their financial affairs.

This also comes at a time, when rumour is gathering that our disposable income has declined considerably in recent years as we face rising mortgage, food and fuel bills. But is it right that employers should have to shoulder some responsibility for this? Does it as one HR Director suggests; open up too much potential litigation risk…

Read Personnel Today's take on the story

Last year Boris Johnson upset a lot of people with his outspoken views on people working from home. Now that he’s been sworn in as the Mayor of London what can we expect him to do to tackle the employment issues in the capital?

Although tackling crime and transport issues appear to have been the mainstay of his mayoral campaign, he does have an employment policy which includes calling for improved skills training and a minimum wage of GBP 7.20 for Londoners.

London has the highest rate of unemployment in England. Before he was elected he said:

“If elected mayor, I will address this problem by working with employers to help them grow their businesses, and find the employees they need.” He went onto to say, “I will also work with employers to improve Londoners' skills, and make it easier for employers to find the staff they need. I have proposed a single London-wide, one-stop career shop, which will provide skills and career advice as well as job information for Londoners, and be a single port of call for employers looking to find employees.”

With almost 1,300 Londoners on jobseeker’s allowance for a continuous period of more than 5 years, he also wants London’s agencies to pool their resources to create a single fund to tackle the city’s long-term unemployment problems. This pool would be managed by the London Skills and Employment Board.

Anything that helps Londoners get back into the workplace has to be good news, but do these measures go far enough?

As always we’d welcome your comments and ideas. Especially from you Mr Mayor!

As management consultancy recruiters we are rarely asked to find ‘raw’ graduates for management consultancies. But we take a keen interest in them because, two or three years later, they start to appear on our radar when our consulting clients seek Analysts or Junior Consultants.

After the dotcom bust of 2001, consultancies severely reduced their graduate intakes in 2002 and 2003. The consequences were felt from 2004 onwards. Business picked up, but there weren’t enough of these ‘Grinders’ (lower-ranking field staff) to do the data gathering and analysis. The effect is still being felt today, as competition for five-year experienced ‘Minders’ (mid-ranking project managers) is intense.

But it seems that the mistakes of the earlier years are not to be repeated. Graduate hire numbers - despite shakeouts in the City – are holding up. Accenture is maintaining its target of 500 graduate hires in the UK this year and, according to research company Trendence Institute, is the firm most highly ranked by students interested in a career in management consultancy (followed by McKinsey, Deloitte and PwC) [For the UK Graduate Recruitment Review as a PDF, click here] And as investment banking falls out of favour amongst students (although the banks too are keeping up the entry-level hire numbers) the consulting firms will have more candidates to choose from.

Accenture is reported to be offering a new, higher starting salary of £31,000 for 2008 graduates, an earnings figure similar to that which most junior consultants with twelve to twenty four months consulting experience earn at small-to-mid-sized firms in London. Just what that will do to salaries in these smaller firms remains to be seen. But it is an indication that new graduates are being keenly sought in the consulting industry, and that the mistakes of the past are not to be repeated.