The words ‘sickness absence’ can strike fear into the hearts of employers and HR Professionals. It’s certainly becoming more of a pressing issue for UK organisations given the current financial pressures and a greater understanding of the direct and indirect costs associated with employees taking time off work due to sickness.

The most recent ONS data reveals that the UK’s sickness absence rate increased to 2.2% in 2021 – the highest it has been since 2010. This equates to 149.3 million working days lost, or an average of 4.6 days per worker. Using the CIPD’s calculations, this amounts to a cost of around £550 per employee each year. With the significant impact sickness absence is having on organisations, the question arises as to what measures employers and HR professionals can take to manage absence.

Developing a well-defined sickness absence policy is a great place to start. This policy can help support employees’ health requirements while providing clear and consistent guidance on when absence reaches unacceptable levels, unauthorised absence or improper use of sick pay schemes.

What should a good sickness absence policy include?

The primary objective of a sickness absence policy is to establish a transparent framework for reporting, handling and documenting sickness absences.

You should therefore start by establishing what you expect from your employees. Setting out your expectations will allow employees to know they will be supported during their absence, when absence may become an issue of ill health capability and make malingerers aware that you can – and will – take disciplinary action (where appropriate).

1. Clearly outline the sickness absence notification process

Your sickness policy should outline the procedure that employees must follow when they are unwell. It should provide answers to the following queries:

• How should employees notify you that they will be absent from work? Do they need to call, text or email? Can someone do this on their behalf or must it be done themselves?
• Who do they need to contact?
• When are they are expected to contact you by? You may ask that they let you know by a certain time in the morning or a certain number of hours before their shift starts.
• When do they believe they will be well enough to return to work?
• Finally, what are the consequences if employees don’t follow these rules?

Having clear rules will help to ensure you’re notified of all employee absences, provide enough time to rearrange cover and help you anticipate when the employee is likely to return to work.

2. Specify what documents employees need to provide when they are off sick

If the absence lasts up to seven calendar days, the employee must provide a self-certificate of the illness. However, if the absence continues for more than seven calendar days, the employee has a duty to provide a Statement of Fitness, known as a Fit Note, from their GP.

It is worth noting that legislation introduced on 1 July 2022 has extended the list of healthcare professionals able to issue fit notes. This includes nurses, occupational therapists, pharmacists and physiotherapists and it is hoped will support employees in obtaining a fit note more readily when they need one, something that is proving problematic at the moment via GP surgeries .

3. Establish sickness absence trigger points

Your sickness absence policy must establish benchmarks, commonly referred to as trigger points, to assist you in determining the unacceptable levels of frequent or short sickness absence and ensure consistency of practice in your organisation.

There are two suggested ways to do this:

Firstly, you could simply establish a threshold for the number of days or occurrences of sickness within a specific period. For example, ‘X days in X months’ or ‘X occasions of sickness in X months.’

Secondly, you could trigger the process when an employee’s absence reaches a predetermined ‘Bradford factor’ score. This approach prioritises the number of absences over their duration and a high number of short absences will result in a much higher score than fewer, longer absences.

Regardless of the method chosen, the absence triggers you set must be understandable, reasonable and known to both employees and managers to monitor employee absences efficiently.

You will also need to determine the consequences once those triggers are met. Will the employee receive an informal caution first? Will repeated absences lead to formal warnings? In cases of severe and unacceptable absences, will they face dismissal?

Remember that the absence management process will operate separately and independently of any disciplinary procedure and that caution should be exercised in applying these thresholds or trigger points regardless, without due consideration of each situation, as the frequent or short sickness absence might be caused by an underlying health condition amounting to a disability.

4. Explain how long-term sickness absences are managed

When dealing with longer-term sickness, you will need to have a separate procedure in place. Some points to consider include:

• How should employees keep in touch during long-term absence? Acas recommends agreeing how often the contact should be, in what form, and who the employee should keep in contact with, whether their line manager, another manager or HR.
• When and how will you contact the employee on a welfare basis to determine what support could be offered?
• At what point will you ask for an Occupational Health referral and/ or seeking a report from the employee’s GP.
• What steps you will take to support the employee back to work, such as offering flexible working arrangements, providing training or additional support, or making reasonable adjustments.
• Do you have an Employee Assistance Programme employees can be signposted to, whether their absence is due to a mental health condition or otherwise?
• When dealing with an employee with a disability, there will be different considerations to keep in mind including your duty to consider any reasonable adjustments to support that employee to overcome a substantial disadvantage they are experiencing.

Remember that each case of long-term sickness will be unique and therefore it’s important to approach it on a case-by-case basis, taking into account the individual circumstances of the employee.

5. Establish what sick pay employees are entitled to

Your sickness absence policy must state what your sick pay arrangements are.

It must outline what the employee will receive, whether they are entitled to contractual sick pay or Statutory Sick Pay (SSP), and for how long. SSP has recently increased and is currently £109.40 per week (as of 6 April, 2023).

How to get your sickness absence policy understood

Effective communication and training are crucial for ensuring all employees understand and follow your sickness absence policy. Merely having a clear and robust policy is not enough. This could start with new employees during your onboarding/induction process and continue as and when significant changes are made to your policy.

Ensure that all employees know where to find the sickness absence policy, whether it’s in their Contract of Employment or another accessible location such as the Employee Handbook or company Intranet.

Getting employees to sign a receipt acknowledging that they have read and understood the policy is also good practice. This will minimise issues arising from employees claiming ignorance of your rules, such as not knowing the proper way to inform their manager of their absence.

Line manager capability is key

Finally, a pro-active and effective management approach should complement your sickness absence policy. Ensure your line managers understand all the relevant procedures in the policy and know exactly what to do if an employee is off sick. This will ensure that employees are treated consistently and fairly when they take sick leave.

Managers should also be monitoring staff absence, as this will enable them to spot certain trends or patterns and take action to rectify the problem. Software such as PeopleNest from our sister company WorkNest, makes monitoring employee absence much easier.

You may notice that an employee has had a very high number of short sickness absences in the last six months. You may spot that one has a tendency to call in sick during big sporting events and another is showing a pattern of being sick on Fridays or Mondays.

In these cases, something needs to be done.