London Stansted Airport saw high levels of employee absence in 2010, with workers losing an average of 24 days per year to sickness and 6 days to other reasons. This resulted in over 60,000 overtime hours to maintain operations. The airport partnered with FirstCare to improve attendance, and saw success - by 2014, days lost per employee fell to 10.1 and overtime hours dropped to 15,000. Initiatives like appointing an attendance manager and improving occupational health referrals and return-to-work interviews contributed to reducing absence. Stansted Airport continues to challenge FirstCare to find new ways to further improve attendance management.

1. London Stansted Airport is one of the busiest airports in the
UK. Annually, more than 18 million passengers arrive or leave
the airport across 147,500 flights to and from 30 different
countries, with more than 214,000 tonnes of Cargo following
travelling with them.
Such a vast level of activity is supported by a highly skilled and
well organised workforce but, in 2010, high levels of absence
remained a key issue that needed to be tackled.
Looking at the Terminal division, as of December 2010 the
average full-time employee was losing 24 days a year due to
sickness absence and a further 6 days due to non-medical
absence. To cope with such productivity losses more than
60,000 hours of overtime were granted, requiring significant
costs to be incurred.
The airport therefore took the decision to work with FirstCare
to reduce absence and have since become one of our most
proactive and successful clients, with the average days lost
per employee falling to just 10.1 days per employee as of May
2014, with the number of overtime hours required to cover
absence falling to just 15,000 annually.
Several initiatives have contributed to such a significant
reduction and have included:
• The appointment of an Attendance Manager as a key,
central contact for coordinating all activities geared
towards reducing absence;
• Integration with Occupational Health and the
development of an online, real-time OH referral system;
• A shift to online return to work interview completion
with line manager training and support.
• Online tracking of employees through the attendance
management procedure.
Finally, Stansted Airport continue to be one of FirstCare’s most
vocal clients, challenging us to find new ways to tackle long
standing problems, or develop new tools with which to uncover
hitherto unforeseen issues, with this partnership approach
proving the key ingredient in our continued efforts to manage
and reduce absence.
Stansted Airport
Working In Partnership With FirstCare
Reduced Overtime
Increased RTW Interview
Compliance
Absence Rate Reduction
Stress Related Absence
18% INCREASE
45,000
less overtime hours
annually
0
5
10
15
20
25
Dec 2010
Transport
Sector
Stansted
Airport
Year
Focus Group
AverageLengthofStress
RelatedAbsence(Days)
DaysLostPerEmployee
May 2014
58%
REDUCTION
in the number of Return to
Work interviews completed.
0
2
4
6
8
10
41%
LOWER

2. London Stansted Airport
Working In Partnership With Firstcare
Absence Management Solutions
www.firstcare.eu info@firstcare.eu
“If you expect your employees to go the extra mile for your customers, you
must prove that you are willing to go the extra mile for them! Our partnership
with First Care has enabled us to focus on the long term benefits of improving
attendance, rather than the short term challenge of managing absence. The
First Care partnership has enabled managers to focus their support on their
colleagues, by reducing the time needed to manage the data. For our business,
it’s about attendance now, not absence, and that enables us to devote our
energies to investing in our people, now and in the future.”
Calum Anderson, Operations Planning Manager
London Stansted Airport