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.