I Have an Employee That Takes a Lot of Odd Days Off Sick. How Can I Manage This?
All employees are entitled to Statutory Sick Pay (SSP) when they are too ill to work. However, when an employee takes frequent short spells of sick leave, they can cause much more disruption than an employee on long term sick leave. But how do you identify where this is happening and manage it as an employer?
The best way to identify where frequent absences are occurring is to use the Bradford Scoring system, which measures employees’ absences with heavy weighting towards the number of spells of absence. A higher Bradford Score = a more disruptive employee.
Once you have identified an issue with an employee who takes frequent sick leave, the first course of action would be to have an informal discussion with the employee to ascertain where they will have the opportunity to explain their frequent absences. If they do have a satisfactory reason, an ongoing health condition for instance, then good practice would be to see what support your company could offer them in order to assist in their recovery or to make it easier for them to do their job.
If you find that the employee doesn’t have a satisfactory reason for their frequent absences, then you should continue the disciplinary process by inviting them to a formal disciplinary meeting, informing the employee of the outcome of the meeting as soon as possible.
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