Public Sector Employees’ Absenteeism to Be Tracked Using Software in Nova Scotia

Canadian province Nova Scotia is implementing a special campaign to track the rate of absenteeism among employees in the public sector. With this program, the government hopes to save money and gain insights into missed work hours.

According to Laura Lee, Public Service Commissioner, the province has to suffer losses of up to US$26 million because of absenteeism of employees in the public sector. Lee quoted this figure while filing a statement with the public accounts committee of the legislature. According to estimates, employees from the public sector miss 12.65 days on an average, annually. Similarly,

These figures do not take into account a majority of public sector employees in the education (school boards) and healthcare sector (district health authorities).

Consider this: the regional school board in Halifax spent nearly US$13.2 million for engaging substitute teachers in academic year 2013-14. Similarly, absenteeism at Capital Health translated into costs of a whopping US$21.65 million.

As part of this program to check absenteeism, the authorities will make use of pattern-tracking software. This will make it possible to monitor the absenteeism of employees and also track trends, ultimately allowing the identification of specific challenges that people have to deal with at work, or outside of it.

According to the rule book, employees in the public sector are entitled to 18 days of sick leave in a year. However, according to authorities, 12.65 days of missed work on account of sickness is high. These views are shared by MLA Tim Houston, who thinks that the issue of absenteeism should be just as relevant in the public sector as it is in the private public.