Many
small – medium business that I work with find sickness absence one of the
biggest disruptions to their business as it cannot be planned for and they
often have little surplus resource to cover.
There
is a myth that many employers think they cannot pro-actively manage absence or
in the worst case scenario, dismiss someone due to their poor attendance level but
the good news is that there are always options.
Here
are our top tips to help reduce absence or at last manage this more
effectively.
1. Have a sickness absence
policy, this clearly sets the requirements for both employee and employer in
the event of sickness. This cover areas such as how you want to be notified of
sickness, by when and what happens upon an employee’s return.
2. Conduct return to work
interviews, often this is overlooked and so there is no discussion from a
welfare point of view to see if an employee is well enough to work but also in
the event of an employee not being genuine about absence there is no follow up
to discourage this type of behaviour.
3. Use a scoring system, taking
action needs to be fair and consistent and this is often where small businesses
fail. Use a system like Bradford Scoring which applies the same principal to
all employees and generates an absence score. There are defined thresholds
where certain actions (such as disciplinary) may be taken.
4. Get medical opinion on long term
cases, when you get to a position where you have seen 4 weeks or more absence
due to a medical issue or condition then you are able to request consent from
your employee to write to their GP who can provide guidance on how to help your
employee return to work, give medical opinion on their health and likely
ongoing issues and in general terms give you the facts needed to make the
decision for your business.
5. Get advice, if you see
persistent adhoc absence or have a long term case that may affect your business
detrimentally then seek help either from a HR Advisor like us or ACAS.
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