Managing sickness absence continues to be a thorny issue for many employers. Attempts to contact sick employees are met with claims of harassment, and endeavours to obtain a medical report are greeted with reluctance or point blank refusal. The cost of delay is expensive with sickness absence costing UK employers more than £11 billion every year. With the problem showing no signs of going away employers simply can’t afford to bury their heads in the sand.

Initiatives to deter persistent short-term absences recently grabbed the headlines with companies offering a range of incentives from hefty financial bonuses and extravagant weekend getaways to personalised ‘Thank You’ cards! Essentially the employee is offered a reward for working for a defined period without taking any sick days. Alternatively, other companies have taken a different view by introducing schemes such as withdrawing (contractual) sick pay for the first 2 - 3 days of the employee’s absence.

Rehabilitation programmes are also growing increasingly popular. The purpose of which are to help employees return to work after a long-term absence and may include flexible working, counselling or training. However, it is important that such programs are not run in isolation but form part of a structured approach to managing sickness absence.

Employers should aim to have a strategy to monitor sick leave, maintain contact with employees who are on long-term sick leave, communicate with them about how their return to work could be facilitated, and consider altering their duties or offering them a different job where appropriate.

The importance of consulting with a sick employee cannot be overestimated. In addition to being a legal requirement it is essential if employers are to get an accurate picture (both medically and otherwise) of what is going on, and thus be able to make an informed decision about the employee’s continued employment. If an employer’s attempts to contact a sick employee are met accusations of harassment it should be pointed out that the employer has the right to make reasonable contact. If the employee maintains that the contact is causing distress they should nominate a friend or relative who can deal with the employer’s queries.

It is important that reasonable steps are taken to establish the true medical position. This generally involves obtaining a report which deals with issues such as the nature of the employee’s illness and its likely length, how the illness impacts on the employee’s ability to do their job, if any changes to their job could be helpful, and how their return to work could be assisted.

However employees should be tactfully made aware that termination of their employment on the ground of ill health is a possibility. When determining whether a dismissal on the grounds of ill health is fair a Tribunal will look at the above factors taking into account an employer’s size and resources. So whereas the decision of a local Eight-Till-Late store to dismiss an employee on the basis of one medical report, and a six-month absence maybe held to be fair and reasonable, supermarket giants would probably come unstuck if they followed the same drill. It is likely that they would be required to keep the employee’s position open for longer, consider more extensive adjustments, and obtain further medical evidence if faced with an unclear or inconclusive initial report.

Employers must also be alive to the questions thrown up by the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 when dealing with long-term sickness absences. If an employee is disabled, a significantly more onerous duty is placed on the employer, and a breach of that duty leaves the door open to allegations of disability discrimination which, if proven, could lead to employers paying out unlimited compensation.

Employers should avoid the temptation of allowing months to pass without doing anything. Reluctance to raise the possibility of dismissal combined with uncertainty about how to deal with the situation at all results in many employers doing too little for too long. Ultimately the law requires employers to ‘manage’ the situation, and ignoring it is expensive not only in terms of mounting sick pay and ever increasing lost man-hours, but also in respect of exposure to unfair dismissal and disability discrimination claims.

Employers should review the way in which they manage sickness absence to check that they are dealing with it pro-actively, and have a fair and effective policy in place.