How the Covid-19 absence tracker works
What is the tracker?
NHS England and NHS Improvement have provided the Coronavirus Absence Tracker to assist NHS Organisations in managing their Corona Virus/Covid 19 related staff absence.
The tracker has been designed to make it simple for staff and managers to report Corona Virus/Covid 19 related absence. It should be used to report:
- Unable to work -caring responsibilities
- Unable to work – symptoms of coronavirus
- Unable to work – confirmed COVID 19 diagnosis
What do I need to do?
The tracker can be completed by either the member of staff themselves, their line manager, or others such as relatives as a “guest”. Where members of staff report via the absence tracker, they should also let their line manager know by phone of their absence. The tracker should only take a few minutes to complete and it requests some essential information.
What do we use the information for?
This data will used by your employer help them to monitor staff levels within the organisation and to help them take any necessary action if you do become affected by COVID-19 and to plan for maintaining our key activities. This may include contacting staff members directly to give them additional advice and support.
Your employer needs emergency contact details to ensure during this time that they have up to date information in case they need to contact you and aren’t able to do so directly. We need to ensure that we keep a regular check on the well-being of our staff.
Your employee will use reports in aggregated form to identify any patterns or wider issues which might need some further management action.
Please note: This is only specific to absences relating to coronavirus, for all other absence from work, please follow the standard process of logging absence.
NHS England and NHS Improvement who manages the absence tracker is controller jointly with your employer for data protection purposes. NHS England and NHS Improvement does not access your absence records. NHS England and NHS Improvement produce reports in aggregated form (numbers) for the purposes of monitoring absence and managing the response to the COVID-19 emergency nationally.
NHS England and NHS Improvement does not access the individual absence records held on the tracker and will not disclose your personal data to anyone other than the contact you provide.
Source: NHS England, The Covid-19 staff absence tracker [accessed 2 June]
