Editorial: Debate on sick rates should look at leave policy

​​The PSNI has a massive problem with sick leave, its chief constable has said.

Simon Byrne was talking with BBC News NI, and he discussed the fact that 550 officers are absent each day. The force has 6,700 officers, so about one in 12 is off every single day.

Mr Byrne said: "It is a real concern for us because the biggest change we have seen is the number of people off for psychological reasons. We can speculate. Is it about the stress of working more with less resources and people just being burnt out? Or is it the effect of worrying about the cost-of-living crisis?"

He also wonders for example if it is the drip drip effect of the trauma of policing. The police do difficult work and deserve our understanding but why, if trauma is the issue, was the sick rate not much higher in the far more stressful 1970s, when Northern Ireland teetered on the brink of civil war? Or if, as Mr Byrne says, it might be about cost-of-living then one in 12 employees across the UK would also be off. Mr Byrne's idea that it might be about the stress of working with less resource is plausible, yet high levels of sick leave in organisations place intolerable pressure on the staff who are not sick. They can cause resentment among that army of people who go out to work and never take sick leave.

Psychological sickness is a much bigger feature of workplaces than it was previously, and this is at least in part due to greater awareness of such illness, which is a good thing. But there are wide cultural differences between types of employment when it comes to sick leave. UK sick rates in the public sector are at least 50% higher in the public sector than private. Yet all the debate is about widening entitlement to sick leave, for example for the menopause. There should at least be a debate about the notion that sick leave policies are at times too generous.