Sickness Absence - Getting The Balance Right

Human beings are complex organisms and like everything that is complicated, things occasionally go wrong and we get ill.

When people are ill they don’t go to work and when employees don’t turn up for work, employers can be put in a difficult position.

There is a fine balance between the needs of an employer to get a job done and the needs of an employee to have time off work to get better.

So, what things do we need to consider in order to get the balance right?

Firstly, many employers draw a distinction between how they treat an employee who has a long period of absence due to a serious illness or accident, and how they deal with employees who are away regularly for short periods, typically less than seven days in total, due to general poor health.

An employee who has a serious illness is generally treated with a certain degree of care and compassion because the employer thinks “that could be me”.

Short term regular absence for all sorts of reasons such as headache, flu, virus, sickness, backache, toothache, cold, heavy cold, frequently receives a much less sympathetic response from the employer.

Employees who have regular short term absences are likely to find their continued employment at risk particularly if their absence record is worse than their colleagues. This is the case despite the fact that they are genuinely ill each time they are away from work.

The reason that an employer can fairly discipline or even dismiss an employee for short-term sickness absences is not because it doubts the employee was genuinely ill, but because the employee is unreliable.

An employee who pulls a “sickie” is likely to be dismissed for misconduct if they are caught.

The lessons for employees are if you are not ill don’t pretend that you are. If you are too ill to work, make sure that you comply fully with your employer’s absence reporting policy. This will normally involve you phoning your employer early on your first day of absence.

The lessons for employers are don’t overreact to ill employees, it happens to virtually everyone now and again. Do monitor absence levels and try and nip excessive absence levels in the bud by talking to the employee concerned before resorting to issuing formal warnings.

Published 06/03/2007.