The cost of illness

With the cold weather about to start again it is inevitable that employers will be faced with staff illnesses but employers need to be aware that having a good sickness absence policy is key to making sure that employees are monitored appropriately.

It is estimated in the UK that about 172 million working days are lost due to sickness every year, costing the economy around £13 billion. Even with such high numbers it is estimated that there are still 28% of employers who do not have a formal sickness reporting procedure.

Employers must make sure that they have a sickness absence policy setting out clearly who to report, by what time they should report any absence and how they should report their absence. Employers should make sure hat they ask the employee what’s wrong, how long they think they will be off for and make a proper note on their personnel file. All line managers should know what the policy is and actively apply it.

If it looks like an employee may be off for sometime, make sure that you keep in contact with them and keep them fully informed about their entitlement to sick pay, contractual and otherwise. Be flexible and try and encourage an employee back to work by making simple changes to their role or workplace if necessary and consider a phased return to work.

When employees do come back, there should be a quick return to work interview, where they are asked about the cause of their absence. Again keeping g a proper note of the return to work and asking the employee to sign means that you will always have something to refer back to if you think that their absence is becoming a problem.

If people are regularly off sick and there is a pattern to their absence you need to speak to them sooner rather than later but be sure of the issues. For example work out a percentage of time off compared to others. Speak to them in private and ask them what the problem is.

It may be that they are off on regular occasions as a result of something that you can help them with, for example unfavourable behaviour by another employee or concerns about their work or workload. If it appears that there is no acceptable explanation behind their absences then tell them that if their attendance doesn’t improve then the next step will be disciplinary action.

Employers able to save £6 million

The Business Secretary Vince Cable and the Chancellor George Osborne this week announced changes to bringing unfair dismissal claims which could save employers across the country, nearly £6 million per year.

As from 6th April 2012 the qualifying period for bringing an unfair dismissal claim in the Employment Tribunal will be increased from 1 year to 2 years.

The Tribunals were originally set up to ensure that there was a cheap and relatively easy way for employees to bring claims against their employers without the need to go to the courts. The current government now intend to bring in charges to the Tribunal which will make them expensive and out of the reach of some.

When a claim is lodged in the Tribunal an upfront fee of £250 will need to be paid and a further £1,000 will be payable where a hearing is listed. If the damages sought are going to be in excess of £30,000 then the fees will be higher.

Although the fees will be refunded where a claim is successful, if a person remains out of work then the costs are likely to put a significant number of people off bringing a claim, even if their claim is not vexatious. Potentially the announcements could mean that employees are going to be unable to enforce their rights but it was also announced that those with no money would have the fee waived. There is very little detail at this stage as to who would qualify for the fees to be waived although perhaps the most likely way of assessing this is that those receiving income support will qualify.

The reality of the announcements are that although employers will have a longer period of time within which to see whether an employee is performing appropriately, they should be very wary that there may well be an increase in the number of discrimination claims on the basis that there will still be no qualifying period for such claims.

As always with such announcements more details will follow.