Lycksele municipality has had MedHelp’s solution for absence management and rehabilitation support since 2011. With the help of MedHelp’s solutions, the municipality has worked constructively with both short and long sick leave, succeeded in reducing sick leave, and ensured order and clarity in the statutory documentation of sickness absence.
Lycksele municipality has around 1,450 permanent employees and a large number of temporary and fixed-term employees in areas such as education, health, and social care. They needed a system to quickly and efficiently get an overview of absence reports, to support HR, and to support managers, who may have 50-60 direct reporting employees. Previously, sickness absences were reported by phone to the nearest manager and HR, which took a lot of time and required a lot of administration.
With MedHelp’s absence management, a channel was created for all sick, healthy, and care-of-child reports, and those affected by the absence receive information automatically through email notifications from the system. According to Camilla Persson, HR specialist at Lycksele Municipality, there are many advantages to a digital system for absence management and rehabilitation support.
– It is convenient that HR and the manager quickly get an overview of the situation and that we have a safe and secure way to document everything that has to do with sick leave. The email notifications that are sent automatically are crucial and make things much easier,’ says Camilla.
The system ensures documentation according to the Work Environment Act and GDPR
MedHelp’s system collects all the necessary information linked to rehabilitation plans when employees are on long-term sick leave.
– This means that we always know where we have the documentation, such as medical certificates, rehabilitation plans, or the results of rehabilitation interviews. It is also very good that all information is saved on the employee card in the system, regardless of whether an employee or manager changes jobs internally or leaves, says Camilla.
In recent years, Lycksele Municipality has worked intensively to reduce short-term absences. By actively working with the rehabilitation chain, they have succeeded in both reducing short-term absence and shortening long-term sick leave. In 2015, the total sick leave was 8.3 percent and in 2019 it had fallen to 6.6 percent.
– MedHelp’s absence management and rehabilitation support are important tools in our work to reduce sickness absence rates. The fact that the manager receives a reminder in case of repeated short-term absences to initiate a health interview with the employee, makes it easier for the manager and has led to fewer sick days, says Camilla.
– It’s easy to see the history and all documentation for each employee. It provides a good basis for HR and managers in dialogue with employees who have had repeated short-term absences over a longer period.
In the case of long-term sick leave, the manager does not have to keep track of what to do or when. It is handled automatically through MedHelp’s rehabilitation support, which sends reminder emails to the manager when action needs to be taken. The same information also goes to an HR specialist, making it easier for the HR unit to support managers.
–Our goal is to continue to reduce sick leave. In recent years, we have succeeded very well, and in 2019 we had the lowest sickness rates ever, while in the spring of this year, like many others, we unfortunately had increased sickness rates due to Corona. Apart from that, both short- and long-term sickness absence have been steadily decreasing for several years now, says Camilla.
Absence management that clarifies the cost of sick leave
The HR unit closely monitors the statistics in the MedHelp system, both sickness figures and sickness absence costs. Every week, they look at the exact situation in each group and organisational level and compare it with previous weeks and the same period last year.
– Because we have managed to reduce sickness absence, both sickness absence and occupational health care costs have gone down. It’s all connected, the need for occupational health care is decreasing as a positive consequence of lower sickness rates, says Camilla.
Managers can easily retrieve statistics for their team and thus get a quick overview to use when communicating with their group, for example at workplace meetings. It is flexible and efficient as they do not need to involve HR to get their figures.
– Our next step is to integrate MedHelp’s solutions with our payroll system, which will further increase efficiency. We also continue to work actively to reduce sick leave and support managers in this work, Camilla concludes.
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