Absence Management Support

It’s when a member of staff doesn’t attend work during their agreed hours. If this is unplanned, such as the employee isn’t on scheduled holiday, the reason may be due to sickness, family emergencies, or truancy. If the staff member doesn’t have permission to be off from work, your business will need a policy and process to document absences and identify any repeat patterns.

There are several steps you can take to address this issue, including supporting employee well-being and work-life balance. You may wish to consider:

• Flexible working policies (remote work, work from home etc.) to support employees’ personal life needs

• Running an Employee Assistance Programme for support

• Recording absences to identify any problem areas

• Foster a positive company culture

• Establish a clear attendance policy

• Offer staff mental health days off for emergencies

Yes. Documenting sick days with a detailed process and company policies is the first step. You can also conduct return to work interviews to ask why the individual was off, consider any adjustments to prevent future absence, and spot patterns in behaviour. It may help to use HR software to log and monitor absences and run MI reports.

Yes. For organisations with larger case volumes that want to get to the bottom of their sickness absence issues, we can produce MI reports to uncover absence hotspots, then work with you consider root causes and agree a plan of action.

Yes. If you’re time-poor, or perhaps feel out of your depth producing more complicated documentation, our fixed-fee Employment Law and HR support includes bespoke document drafting from your employment documents, from correspondence with employees to letters to medical practitioners.

As a general principle, it is not permissible for an employer to ask a job applicant any questions about their health or disability until they have been offered a job. It is also not advisable to ask someone how many sick days they took in their last role. In very specific circumstances, you can ask before offer stage.

However, it is permissible and advisable to hold return to work meetings with employees after they return from sickness absence for the reasons highlighted above. Whilst there is nothing to force an employee to give detailed reasons as to why they were off, it is in the best interests of both parties that there is a degree of honesty. If the employee has an underlying condition affecting absence, it is advisable to tell their employer about it. That will allow them to make any reasonable adjustments to accommodate it.

You should always hold a return to work meeting after every instance of absence. This is best practice as it will enable you to understand the reason for the absence, address any health concerns and look at ways to accommodate any underlying illness. Holding a return to work meeting can also discourage future absences. You should ensure that you follow any absence procedure as set out in your Employee Handbook. That will usually explain what steps to take once a certain number of absences are reached.

The letter should contain all the information you wish to rely on during the hearing, so perhaps a copy of the employee’s attendance record, copy of doctors’ notes and/or other medical evidence, and copies of the minutes from return to work meetings. The letter should also state the possible outcome of the meeting, for example a first written warning for poor attendance.

Unauthorised absences are absences that employees do not have a contractual right or the employer’s permission to take. While staff should stay at home if they are sick, it is reasonable to expect employees to notify their employer at their earliest convenience if they will not be able to attend work. This will typically be laid out within the employer’s sickness absence policy.

In this way, while an employee is within their rights not to work when they are ill, if they fail to inform their employer in the way outlined in the policy, this may qualify as an unauthorised absence and may lead to disciplinary action.

Technically, employees with poor attendance records would not be disciplined. They would be subject to a formal absence management process with meetings convened as and when trigger points are hit. Please note that it will never be fair to dismiss someone with over two years’ service for persistent poor attendance without going through the full range of warnings first. Any warning should be issued following a fair procedure and should be accompanied by a timescale and suggestions for improvement, together with details of the action the employer will take if there is no improvement within the specified timescale.