The IA agreement must require active participation
From 2018, sickness absence has increased. We believe it is related to the change that was made to the IA agreement the same year.
" From 2018, sickness absence has increased. We believe it is related to the structure of the IA agreement," says Marianne Kjellsen, lawyer at NITO.
The IA agreement was first entered into in 2001. Until 2019, each individual company could actively choose to join the agreement, and then had to set its own local goals, thereby gaining access to public policy instruments.
From active to passive agreement
"The agreement that was entered into from 2019 to 2022 was significantly changed. The IA agreement was to cover all businesses in Norway, regardless of whether they wanted this or not," says Kjellsen.
Instead of being an agreement that only concerned those companies that made an active choice to work with their own specific goals, the focus was now to be in the form of industry programmes in sectors that struggled with high sickness absence. Hospitals were one area that was covered by the industry programmes.
The agreement committed
" The obligations in the IA agreement up to 2019 meant that the company, in collaboration with the employee representatives, set goals to work for a reduction in sickness absence," says NITO's lawyer.
Goals were also set for retaining and recruiting people with disabilities, as well as keeping seniors in work for as long as possible. The agreement provided exclusive access to NAV's working life centres and instruments such as grants for facilitation.
From 2019, sickness absence has increased. We believe it is related to the structure of the IA agreement. Figures from a new study from the National Institute of Occupational Health support this.
New agreement should commit
" The upcoming IA agreement should commit the companies that actively want to participate, through their own local sub-goals," says Kjellsen.
Local ownership of the IA work is needed to reduce sickness absence, get more people with reduced ability to work to stay in work and get them into working life, and finally to get more older people to stay in work longer. The companies that commit themselves should have access to a policy instrument that is exclusive to those companies that make an active choice to work in collaboration with the employee representatives to achieve the sub-goals in the IA agreement.