With regards to employee absence from work, there is one main thing that organisations are legally obliged to do; pay statutory sick pay. Apart from this, there are actually no legal requirements with regards to sickness absence. Having said that though, if an organisation manages sickness absence badly, you may find yourself in a sticky situation.
So to avoid costly employment tribunal claims, just follow the below advise: First things first, ensure you accurately measure employee absence levels in your organisation. This is the first step in finding out whether your organisation has an issue with absence or not. Key data that you should monitor includes how many days lost, which department suffers the most absence, the most common reason for absence, and any trends or patterns in absence.
Once you start to notice absence trends you will begin to see which employees have more absence than is considered acceptable. To ensure that these particular employees are monitored you will need to put in place absence triggers.
It's considered good practice to make sure that as an employer you do everything possible to help your employees back into work and ensure their continued health and well being. This may include Company Health referrals, regular communication, well being activities at work and so on.
You may also want to consider assessing the individuals work load, making reasonable adjustments or amendments to their working pattern to assist their return to work.
If you are looking to reduce absence levels in your organisation then you should look at the following areas:
- Working conditions
- Salary, pay and benefits
- Job roles and responsibilities
- Health and Safety
- Employee relations
- Welfare
Aside from this, you should ensure that all employees are aware of your organisations absence management policy. This should be available for employees to access at all times.