Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are for the Minister of Human Resources. I want follow up on my statement when I talked about absenteeism and mental health in the workplace and making our workplace better.
I mentioned a statistic from the 2013 Public Service Annual Report and I’d like to first off ask the Minister, the statistic I mentioned was 12.3 days absence per employee in the year 2013. So, I’d like to know from the Minister, if he can tell me, what accounts for the very high incidence of days absent from work? Are there any statistics that he can give us, to me, to the House? Any reasons for absence that add up to 12.3 days per employee? Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Minister of Human Resources, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The sick leave is monitored and tracked by the Department of Human Resources; however, specifically why the individual employees are on sick leave is not indicated. It’s a privacy matter and individuals have a union agreement that they are allowed a certain amount of sick leave. If they’re within that amount of sick leave that’s allocated within their employment agreement, then we don’t ask why. If they start to exceed that amount, then there’s more investigation with the employee and there could be discussions to determine exactly why an individual would be missing more than what is allowed in the agreement. Thank you.
Thanks to the Minister. It may be that every employee is allowed 12 sick days per year according to their Collective Agreement, but I’d like to know from the Minister, because the Public Service Annual Report presumably looks at all aspects of our public service, and I would hope that they would also be looking at costs of certain actions of our public service, does the Minister have any idea what the cost is for 12.3 days of absence per employee in a calendar year? Thank you.
The negotiated amount is actually 15 days of sick leave per employee. Once they exceed not the 15 days but a certain amount of days, less than 15, I think it is nine days, the individual can be questioned by their supervisor as to why.
Determining the cost, I guess I don’t have that specific number with me; however, it would be very easy to determine the cost. We just have to track the sick leaves, as we have done, to determine how much the individuals are being paid who are taking the sick leave, do the arithmetic and we would come up with the number. Thank you.
Thanks to the Minister. I would think with 4,500 or 5,000 employees, whatever we have, times 12 days times an average salary per day, it’s going to be a pretty huge number. I would urge the Minister to look at that number and consider that maybe we ought to be considering the cost of absenteeism and working to bring that down somehow.
There is a report that I have encountered which says that up to 25 percent of mental disability costs directly incurred by an employer are preventable. I talked a lot in my statement about mental health and the need for us to make it easier for people to talk about it, easier for people to bring it into the workplace, not the mental health illness itself but to talk about it.
One of the things that I think is increasing more and more is stress leave. So, I’d like to know from the Minister, in terms of mental illness in the workplace, in terms of stress leave, which I think is a mental illness in itself, what are we doing with our workplaces, in our workplaces to try and reduce stress and to try and reduce the amount of absenteeism related to mental illness and stress? Thank you.
All of the departments do have occupational health and safety committees. They have regular meetings and they talk to the departments within the department heads and so on. If there is an issue where they think that individuals could be missing a lot of work, then they can’t really come out and ask individuals why they are missing work, so there is an offer that we have within the government that is an Employee and Family Assistance Program. Many people take advantage of that.
Last year, out of the public service, we had just slightly over 800 individuals access that program, so it could be part of their family as well. This year we’re anticipating that it will be closer to 900 individuals accessing the EFAP. This is available to people and we do have a campaign where we try to have the departments aware of the invisible disabilities, which mental health and illness could fall under. We do try to communicate to the employees on mental health in the workplace.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thanks to the Minister. I appreciate that we have health and safety committees, and I’m very glad to hear that employees are taking advantage of the services that are available for them. But I’m talking a bit more about something that is broader. I’m talking about a culture in the workplace. We have tried to promote a culture of safety. I think we also need to promote a culture within the workplace where it’s okay to talk about mental illness and mental health problems. The Minister mentioned a campaign.
I guess I would like to know from the Minister: What are we doing to try and promote a culture of awareness of health, acceptance of disabilities and differences, for lack of any better way of putting it?
The campaign has posters. We promote an inclusive workplace and we provide information to our employees. We have a GNWT Advisory Committee on Employability and the Employee and Family Assistance Program. We look at these. We try to promote as much as possible. We do encourage our managers to have discussions with individuals where we suspect that they are missing work due to mental illness and try to direct them in the right place so that they can receive some help. But there are a lot of privacy issues here as well. We have to be cognizant of privacy issues, so we work within that, recognizing that there are privacy issues. But this is what we do to try to assist employees.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The Member for Mackenzie Delta, Mr. Blake.
