Municipalities: Increased tasks, staff shortages and high levels of sick leave place a strain on daily work – hence the demand for a reduction in bureaucracy here too
September 11, 2023 – 6:14 p.m
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A shortage of skilled workers and an increase in tasks mean that the psychological stress on employees in the Lower Franconian local government is increasing. Photo: Pat Christ
Photo: Pat Christ
Almost every city and almost every municipal administration in Lower Franconia is affected by this: employees are constantly absent due to illness.
“In our case in Wertheim, the sickness rate was below average before the Corona crisis, but in the spring of 2023 it increased significantly,” reports Charlotte Friedel, head of the city’s human resources department. As a result, the workload of all those employees in the town hall who were not on sick leave increased “significantly”.
It is normal for someone to be out for a week due to illness. “But the number of cases is also increasing significantly in many areas,” confirms Aschaffenburg’s press spokeswoman Carla Diehl. However, statistical evaluations are only available to the city until the end of 2022. Accordingly, the illness rate last year was eight percent. That was one percentage point more than in the pre-Corona year 2019. Around 25 sick days were registered per employee before the outbreak of the Corona crisis. In 2022 there were more than 29. Employees are very often absent due to a respiratory illness.
Extreme situation in March
The high level of sickness affects the cleaner and the clerk, the head of department and the caretaker. The situation in many town halls was particularly extreme in March this year. According to the press office of the city of Würzburg, the rate of sickness reports this month was twelve percent – four percentage points higher than in March 2019. “We suspect that it was primarily the wave of colds in the spring that caused increased levels of illness,” said the press spokeswoman Claudia Lother. However, over the entire first half of 2023, Würzburg has a below-average illness rate of eight percent.
From yoga to Qigong to Tai Chi, local governments offer their employees options to stay healthy at work. “We have also launched an extensive company sports program,” says Würzburg’s human resources officer Robert Scheller. City employees take part in the Würzburg company run. A health day is organized every year. There is “power food” in the canteen. “We also offer health care, ranging from monthly health tips, massages and sports activities to cancer prevention and vaccinations,” says Aschaffenburg’s mayor Jürgen Herzing.
Human resources managers in Lower Franconia’s town halls are also keeping an eye on the problem of “burnout”, a condition that is no longer labeled as a fashionable disease. According to the Aschaffenburg press office, mental illnesses are the third most common reason why employees are absent. “Long-term illnesses arise from overload,” explains Carla Diehl. They made up “a large proportion” of the city administration. Some employees are also suffering from Long Covid. Due to the high level of sickness, the service can no longer be fully guaranteed. For citizens, this means that they have to wait much longer for many things.
The Wertheim town hall (Main-Tauber district) does not know whether the employee was transported to the hospital or whether an employee was “just” lying in bed at home completely exhausted. However, together with a health insurance company, an anonymous report is currently being prepared for 2022 that will show approaches for urban health management, says Charlotte Friedel. She also confirms that city employees are currently under a lot of strain.
In short-staffed administrations, the flood of tasks was often only managed through rationalization. Or, as happened in Wertheim, through overtime. According to Carla Diehl from Aschaffenburg, the stress is increased by growing expectations: “Some people wait a year for a car from the car dealer, but want an appointment within two days to register it.”
Positions not filled
The fact that so many employees in Lower Franconia’s town halls are gradually exhausted is due to this triad: colleagues are constantly sick, positions cannot be filled immediately, and at the same time there is always something new to do. There are always job vacancies in the city of Würzburg, confirms Claudia Lother: “And of course, as in the whole of Lower Franconia, filling trainee positions is becoming increasingly difficult for us given demographic change.” Six planned training positions and two places for Internships are currently not filled. After all, the city managed to hire 38 young people on September 1st.
To ensure that employees don’t burn out, Würzburg is investing in digitalization. In order to counteract the staff shortage, de-bureaucratization and a streamlining of administrative processes would also be important, according to human resources officer Robert Scheller. Mayor Jürgen Herzing confirms that a lack of personnel is also a major problem in Aschaffenburg. There are fewer and fewer applications for advertisements: “For very specialized tasks, sometimes there are no suitable applicants at all.” Every year, the city loses around 70 employees due to retirement and fluctuation, whose positions have to be filled.
Balancing job and family
Balancing job and family is important for many employees. The city of Aschaffenburg is reacting to this, says Herzing: “We have already gone through the ‘berufundfamile audit’ for the fifth time.” In general, the working conditions are constantly being improved in order to increase the attractiveness of the jobs. “We have already implemented some things, such as the possibility of mobile working or height-adjustable desks,” said the mayor. The organizational development that is currently underway aims to streamline and simplify processes: “Next year we will start a recruiting campaign for skilled workers.”
Furthermore, Jürgen Herzing confirms that city employees not only have to stay on the ball like all other professionals because their specific area of responsibility is constantly evolving. According to the mayor of Aschaffenburg, completely new, additional tasks have to be completed on a permanent basis. The Corona crisis presented major challenges. Now we have to react to the gas shortage. It is difficult to take in the many refugees. In addition, there are high, new requirements in terms of climate protection and climate adaptation: “That’s why the legislature must finally take a serious approach to reducing bureaucracy.”
PAT CHRIST
Keyword: sick leave
From January 1st to June 30th there were an unusually high number of absences from work due to illness in Germany. Just over half of all employees were on sick leave at least once in the first half of 2023. This high rate is usually only reached at the end of a year, reports the health insurance company DAK. Compared to the same period last year, the number of cases rose by 61 percent. The DAK had never measured such a high level of sickness as in the first half of 2023 since the start of its half-year analyzes in 2013. ()
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