Tom Simnett, founder of ‘Initforthe’ knows everything there is to know about workplace management and making life easier and more organised through digital solutions such as CRM, project management platforms, and invoice software which are designed to make project and people management easier, and happier.

After the claims made by the Priminster this week, Tom says that Rishi Sunak told us we have a “sick note culture”, but if you look at the data, what we see is something quite different.

The priminster is setting out plans to reduce the number of people turning to sick leave if the conservative party is re-elected in the upcoming general election. During his speech, he made bold claims that 850,000 of the working population “have become economically inactive” and that half of these individuals say they have depression and anxiety, whilst describing his plan to reform the welfare system as a “moral mission”.

Tom says we need to look deeper into why people are not wanting to work. He says presenteeism appears to be rife, as does mental and physical health. He took to LinkedIn to say that 70% of UK workers are unhappy at work, and this is mostly caused by poor workplace culture, systems, and communications which has steered to stress, unhappiness and resentment to the workplace which appears as lack of engagement, presenteeism and absenteeism.

After two decades running business software systems for the workplace and people management, Tom knows that improving the working environment is the answer to making it more enjoyable. However, this does not mean slides, a bar, free food or any other “gimmicks”. It does mean more purposeful work, less mundane work, and more engagement in the work and the changes that happen and will happen in the workplace.

“It means creating systems and processes around the people who are there, instead of making them fit into the round hole that wasn’t designed for their square peg. It means letting them drive the change. It means allowing people to feel part of something important.

If we do those things, we’ll see presenteeism and absenteeism drop through the floor. We’ll see productivity reach heights never before imagined. We’ll see profit in businesses rise and so we can pay staff more and deliver a better quality of life for everyone. We’ll see less stress and more happiness, and we’ll see fewer people needing sick notes.

Consider that we’ve been looking at it wrong all this time. Consider that to create a better more profitable business, we need a happier workforce. Consider that every member of staff deserves to feel valued and important to the operation of the business. Because that is what it is to be human. So instead of treating our workforce like robots, lets treat them like human beings.

Let’s fix the “sick note culture” by actually reducing the stress, not by stopping the issuing of sick notes.”