Case · Esbjerg Municipality
Both sides knew the call was coming
Esbjerg Municipality asked for help adapting a course on sickness absence.
We suggested they did not.
0.5 daysdrop in short-term absence per employee
3,600working days saved in a year, about 26,600 hours
about 9 minthe three films together — against a 90-minute course
From one of the three films on sickness absence.
The job that came in
Another municipality had built a course for managers on sickness absence. It ran 90
minutes and was well made. The job sounded simple: turn it into an Esbjerg version.
We said no. Not because the course was bad, but because we did not think people would
get much out of 90 minutes on a subject where the problem is not what people know.
We quickly doubted that this was where the effort would buy the most behaviour. Sickness absence is
not a rule-set to be memorised. It is sensitive, full of dilemmas, and what has to
move is behaviour in both managers and employees.
The municipality already had a sickness absence model — 1-5-14 — where the manager makes contact
on particular days of absence. The model was there. It just was not followed.
We proposed something else: drop the course, and look at why the model is not
followed.
What was actually in the way
Together with development consultants from the municipality we brought managers, union representatives and
health and safety specialists into a workshop. Not to teach them — to find out what
the barriers were.
What came out was not a knowledge problem. The managers knew perfectly well when to call.
It was uncomfortable to do it, and employees could experience the call as surveillance. Both sides felt unsafe about the call — and neither had a clear sense of what the conversation was supposed to achieve.
What was done
- The rules were written more simplySame content, easier to explain and to understand.
- The message now went to bothThe automatic prompt to call a welfare conversation
used to go to the manager only. Now the employee got it as well.
- Three short films — for managers and employees alikeExplainers made in Vyond,
about nine minutes in total: the rules, frequent absence, long-term absence. They set clear
expectations — about the contact on the first day of absence, for instance — and put to rest worries such as
the fear of losing your job. And they said what the conversation is for: keeping hold of
the employee while that is still possible. That serves the individual, and it protects
the workplace. Without that reason, a call on the first day of absence is just surveillance.
The municipality did the first two themselves after the workshop. We made the films on top of that, because
a clear explanation to both sides was still missing.
The expectation became shared, because both saw the same thing — and knew the
other had seen it too.
That is where the third move differs from the other two. A message informs one recipient at a time.
A film both sides know is meant for both of them does something else: it turns the expectation into
common knowledge. If the employee is expecting the call, it becomes odd not to make it — and
if the manager has heard the reason explained to the employee, the call is no longer surveillance.
It gets harder for both to skip, and both feel safer about it.
Animation was chosen because sensitive situations can be shown realistically without turning
dramatic — which happens easily with live actors.
What came of it
The three films were far cheaper to produce than developing the course would have been
— and in our and the municipality’s judgement had a bigger effect. Sickness absence in the
municipality is falling.
And if we are to guess what made the difference: the first thirty seconds of the
first film. Not the film — the opening. That is where it is said that the call is coming, that it
goes to everyone, and that it is not a reaction to anything in particular.
The rest explains rules, and the rules were not the problem. Those thirty seconds remove the
unsafety — and only after that can anyone use the rest for anything. It is also
the order of the four dimensions: safety is settled first, and while it is under pressure you do not
get on to the others.
That is an informed guess from the people who made it — not a measurement. The films came as a set, so
they have never been measured separately, let alone second by second.
What the number covers — and what it does not
Short-term absence fell by 0.5 calendar days of sickness per employee. In an organisation
of more than 10,000 people that is about 26,600 hours, or 3,600 whole working days,
on an annual basis. The drop has held steady for many months.
What we cannot say is which of the three moves did what. The films, the
simplified policy and the two-sided prompts went live at the same time. It is a before-and-after measurement in an organisation where
other things are moving too, not a controlled trial.
And what the case shows independently of the number: two of the three moves that changed something were
not teaching.
Why this is the general pattern
When a duty is not carried out, the reaction is often to teach more. That works if the problem is capability and knowledge. Here it was safety and meaning — and those dimensions do not move
because of a course, however well it is made.
The cheapest fix in the whole project was sending a message that was already being sent to
one more recipient.