In a 6 month period how many sick days are "acceptable"

[tim2100]

This is all assuming that everybody in the organisation is 100% healthy.

What happens if an employee has a health condition, who requires occasional hospital admissions.

Should that person loss 3 days everytime they have to go into hospital? Or tell the hospital that work is far more important than their health? Or failing that go onto incapacity Benefit where their money will stay the same?

[jesta1865]

robsti said:

Frankeh said:

robsti said:

P.S. Unless you are a public sector worker !

In which case I'd be stealing from you, amrite?

No! Then it just a given!!!

oh get stuffed, not all of us in the public sector sit at home swinging the lead.

i worked for natwest for 10 years and the only time i had off sick was when i broke my leg playing football and had to have my leg pinned.

i worked at the next place for 2 years no time off

i worked for Merrill Lynch for 6 years and in the 1st 5.5 years had maybe 5 days off sick all paid in all organisations.

towards the end at ML i seemed to get sick a lot and got made redundant at end 2002, jan 2003 found i was now diabetic.

i have now worked in the Public Sector for 9 years, I have had as little time off due to illness as possible being diabetic, my eyes are my big problem, i drive to work and sometimes my eyesight is a bit blurry. however my biggest issue with time away from work is hospital appointments, they often end in me missing a whole day, as even a 9:30am appt has ended up with me walking out of work at 2 - 3pm, then its nearly a 1.5 hour drive to work from there.

for me the appointments to see health pros is the issue, just this week i has a letter tuesday asking me to attend an eye test yesterday, 10:30 allow 3 hours, also don't drive you may have to have eye drops. so now i need the Mrs to take me, who works in a school and can't get that time off. what planet are the NHS on sometimes?

Also I have been sent home a couple of times from work as they don't want me in spreading what i have.

So not all of us in the Public Sector are skivvers, some of us work hard, and struggle through just like you lot, mind you will then post about how annoying the guy is behind you as he is sitting there sniffing and sneezing all day.

wish i was perfect like some of you lot.

[johnfm]

JontyR said:

Carrot said:

Roberty said:

anonymous said:

[redacted]

Why the hell should there be a difference?

Because public sector workers know that they are more likely to be framed for murder than actually fired. I know of someone that turned up to work drunk on several occasions and only got fired after 3 years...

When I worked for the Civil service (I was contracting!) There was a guy who was caught having a tommy tank under the table!! He only received a warning, this despite receiving a warning from being caught doing the same previously!! I did see one person get the sack...but only because they were caught with their trousers round their ankles with some poor woman lying legs akimbo on the table whilst her husband watched on! What some people will do to get a ticket into the country!

Nobody notice this gem?

[stevedrummie]

have worked in the public sector for years and on the whole people are genuine and only take time off when really unwell-but have to say have also seen (too many)who just rip the system off and they are bloody difficult to deal with-they know how to expolit the system and we talk about the "majic six month medicine"when they come back to work on the exact day that their six month full sick pay runs out...cough...gotta go now...feel a sickie coming on!

[jesta1865]

johnfm said:

JontyR said:

When I worked for the Civil service (I was contracting!) There was a guy who was caught having a tommy tank under the table!! He only received a warning, this despite receiving a warning from being caught doing the same previously!! I did see one person get the sack...but only because they were caught with their trousers round their ankles with some poor woman lying legs akimbo on the table whilst her husband watched on! What some people will do to get a ticket into the country!

Nobody notice this gem?

no i was just trying to get the image out of my mind

[jesta1865]

stevedrummie said:

have worked in the public sector for years and on the whole people are genuine and only take time off when really unwell-but have to say have also seen (too many)who just rip the system off and they are bloody difficult to deal with-they know how to expolit the system and we talk about the "majic six month medicine"when they come back to work on the exact day that their six month full sick pay runs out...cough...gotta go now...feel a sickie coming on!

i worked with a bloke at natwest like that, so many weeks at full pay then, half pay. he managed to get signed off with stress for a weeks less than the full amount. then again, then again 3 times in 12 months he was off for just over 2 months at a time.

then amazed everyone when he took voluntary redundancy, got a decent pay-off (had worked there for years) it then turned out he had been starting up his own business and was going to leave anyway as it had taken off and the redundancy was a nice bonus. jammy toad.

[mph1977]

Piersman2 said:

<snip>

I think people should be paid nothing if they don't turn up unless they submit a proper doctor's note. That would probably reuce sick pay to about 10% of current levels.

yet another person who hasn't quite thought things through ...

at the present time this policy is illegal and is likely to get the HMRC/DWP/ minimum wage types sniffing around.

Self certification was brought in for a very good reason, managing demand on GP services and the Emergency Department, recognsising that the majority of people know when they have a self limiting illness such as a '24 hour bug' , bad cold/ man flu/ mild case of actual flu, ear infections, tooth abscesses until the Anitbiotcs kick in/ dentist pulls the manky tooth and the like , also stuff like sprains and strains which limit your mobility for a day or two

If as an employer you wanted to bring that in welcome to the world of providing a properly qualified GP / MIOH Consultant within reasonable reach of every employee, because the law as it stands allows only 2 individuals to make a pronouncement of fitness for work
1. the individual ( for the first 7 days of illness)
2. a Registered Medical Practitioner

If people are taking the piss or are absent so often they are on the verge of frustating their contract then you use Capability (Attendance) and/or if you have proof that they are taking it friviolously plain disciplinary action against them.

To avoid making 'mistakes' which will land you in the st having someone who understands the Equality Act and the Disability Discrimination parts of the Equality Act and to have some kind of Occupational Health Provision - there are plenty of independent contractors in Occ Health and/or Big firms / NHS trusts who sell their 'spare' Occ health capacity ...

[Countdown]

mph1977 said:

Piersman2 said:

<snip>

I think people should be paid nothing if they don't turn up unless they submit a proper doctor's note. That would probably reuce sick pay to about 10% of current levels.

yet another person who hasn't quite thought things through ...

at the present time this policy is illegal and is likely to get the HMRC/DWP/ minimum wage types sniffing around.

Self certification was brought in for a very good reason, managing demand on GP services and the Emergency Department, recognsising that the majority of people know when they have a self limiting illness such as a '24 hour bug' , bad cold/ man flu/ mild case of actual flu, ear infections, tooth abscesses until the Anitbiotcs kick in/ dentist pulls the manky tooth and the like , also stuff like sprains and strains which limit your mobility for a day or two

If as an employer you wanted to bring that in welcome to the world of providing a properly qualified GP / MIOH Consultant within reasonable reach of every employee, because the law as it stands allows only 2 individuals to make a pronouncement of fitness for work
1. the individual ( for the first 7 days of illness)
2. a Registered Medical Practitioner

If people are taking the piss or are absent so often they are on the verge of frustating their contract then you use Capability (Attendance) and/or if you have proof that they are taking it friviolously plain disciplinary action against them.

To avoid making 'mistakes' which will land you in the st having someone who understands the Equality Act and the Disability Discrimination parts of the Equality Act and to have some kind of Occupational Health Provision - there are plenty of independent contractors in Occ Health and/or Big firms / NHS trusts who sell their 'spare' Occ health capacity ...

or alternatively just pay SSP

[Countdown]

stevedrummie said:

have worked in the public sector for years and on the whole people are genuine and only take time off when really unwell-

Yep

stevedrummie said:

but have to say have also seen (too many)who just rip the system off and they are bloody difficult to deal with-they know how to expolit the system

Again yep

From personal experience the best way of dealing with this is creating/developing a good team / good work atmosphere. Then peer pressure kicks in (usually).

[GarryA]

2 periods of sick in 13wks is a disciplinary - we have the right to waiver if we feel its unavoidable.

More than 4 weeks off - medical / physical before return to work, home visits etc....

[PF62]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

A point that is usually not mentioned when this statistic is mentioned - How long is the period that sick pay paid. In the civil service someone sick will usually receive full pay for 6 months and 1/2 pay for a further 6 months. How does this compare to the private sector?

Google threw up this report on the Northern Irish Civil Service, which I would assume is pretty much the same as the rest of the UK.
http://www.nisra.gov.uk/publications/0809%20Financ...

Plucking a couple of statistics from the report -

- 49.8% of staff had no sick leave at all in the year, and a further 31.9% only had one occasion.

- 70% of incidents of sick leave were for 5 days or fewer (35.5% 1-2 days, and 36.5% 3-5 days)

So that sounds pretty much like the private sector. However, you now get to the killer -

- Long term sick leave (more than 20 days) accounted for 70.6% of all working days lost, with 10% of staff taking more than 20 days in any one year.

So strip out the long term sick, and I suspect that the public and private sector figures are very similar. It is the significant number of staff on long term sick that is causing the imbalance, as I doubt that private industry retains staff on long term sick for the same length of time.

10% of staff off for more than 20 days in a year does look like an awful lot, especially with the 34.2% due to "anxiety/stress/depression", but all those people must have been signed off sick by their doctor. So were they really sick and were able to retain their job due to the civil service long term sick policy, or were they just swinging the lead and got away with it because their doctor couldn't be bothered to argue?

Anyway, to reinforce at least one prejudice, the comparison in the report of the difference between female absence and male absence, with women taking twice as much time off as men (even after adjusting for pregnancy related issues).

[Tyre Smoke]

No, believe me, Norn Iron wkers would take as much as they could from the
British taxpayer.

[db]

jesta1865 said:

oh get stuffed, not all of us in the public sector sit at home swinging the lead.

i have now worked in the Public Sector for 9 years...my biggest issue with time away from work is hospital appointments, they often end in me missing a whole day, as even a 9:30am appt has ended up with me walking out of work at 2 - 3pm, then its nearly a 1.5 hour drive to work from there.

for me the appointments to see health pros is the issue, just this week i has a letter tuesday asking me to attend an eye test yesterday, 10:30 allow 3 hours, also don't drive you may have to have eye drops. so now i need the Mrs to take me, who works in a school and can't get that time off. what planet are the NHS on sometimes?

Also I have been sent home a couple of times from work as they don't want me in spreading what i have.

So not all of us in the Public Sector are skivvers, some of us work hard, and struggle through just like you lot, mind you will then post about how annoying the guy is behind you as he is sitting there sniffing and sneezing all day.

wish i was perfect like some of you lot.

you are taking the piss, aren't you?
excuse bold if not.
expect more if you are

[liner33]

Countdown said:

Why?

I have a member of staff who suffers from Migraines. They come and go but they are extremely bad. As a result she's had 5 mondays off. From what you're suggesting I should treat her less favourably than somebody who has one incident of 5 days sickness, because she's got a doctors note ?

I had one member of staff who was off twice with Swine Flu. When I asked her that it was impossible to get swine flu twice within 3 months she said "Oh the GP thinks he must have misdiagnosed it the last time"

Although it sounds unfair to be applying the same procedure to everybody IME if you are fair and consistent there shouldn't be a problem. Start cutting people slack (rightly or wrongly) and there's a good chance it will come back to bite you in the behind.

As I said any sickness needs investigating but if you have a policy of disciplinary action after 5 days sick as a blanket rule then your employee with migraines will get treated the same as someone who likes to party too much at weekends and then fails to come in on Mondays

You cannot treat all sickness the same imo

[liner33]

When I worked in the public sector we had one guy off on long term sick due to stress, another colleague who was being treated for cervical cancer had to use her holiday for hospital visits

[robsti]

db said:

jesta1865 said:

oh get stuffed, not all of us in the public sector sit at home swinging the lead.

i have now worked in the Public Sector for 9 years...my biggest issue with time away from work is hospital appointments, they often end in me missing a whole day, as even a 9:30am appt has ended up with me walking out of work at 2 - 3pm, then its nearly a 1.5 hour drive to work from there.

for me the appointments to see health pros is the issue, just this week i has a letter tuesday asking me to attend an eye test yesterday, 10:30 allow 3 hours, also don't drive you may have to have eye drops. so now i need the Mrs to take me, who works in a school and can't get that time off. what planet are the NHS on sometimes?

Also I have been sent home a couple of times from work as they don't want me in spreading what i have.

So not all of us in the Public Sector are skivvers, some of us work hard, and struggle through just like you lot, mind you w




then post about how annoying the guy is behind you as he is sitting there sniffing and sneezing all day.






wish i was perfect like some of you lot.

you are taking the piss, aren't you?
excuse bold if not.
expect more if you are

He is not taking the piss!
This is the problem when you are in the public sector ,they think that what they are all doing is OK and the NORM because they are getting paid for all these days off!
Just stop paying people for the first 3 days off at a time and you will see how quickly the number of mystery 1 and 2 day "sickles" disappear!

[ATG]

R1 Loon said:

Why? There is no exemption from disciplinary action because the illness is genuine, as I've posted before non-genuine absence is potentially gross misconduct.

When you enter into a contract of employment you are implicitly agreeing that you are ready, willing and able to work. If you are not, then you are not fulfilling the terms of your contract.

Whilst some employers can absorb some absence, not all can, and if your absence ends up costing the company, then they are well within their rights to discipline as they feel appropriate.

It'd be interesting to know more though, as there is probably a history of absence and these were just the last two examples. The normal excuse is "But I was genuinely sick this time", which is imediately followed wiht the question from me "Are you suggesting that the otherinstances were just sickies?".

Disciplinary action is only ever taken with a trend or multiple examples, yet people confuse it with occurring because of the last instance, when in fact it relates to all absences over a period of time.

Uhm ... bks. See you at the employment tribunal.

I have every sympathy with companies suffering from absentee problems. Pulling sickies is rife and should be seen by everyone as being unacceptable.

But confusing genuine sickness with a "disciplinary" problem is daft, and if a company uses a disciplinary process to handle the dismissal of a member of staff who is unable to carry out their duties due to genuine ill health, then they are going to get their arses kicked and rightly so. You don't have to continue to employ someone who can no longer carryout their duties - but you don't pretend it is a failure of discipline on their part.

[R1 Loon]

ATG said:

Uhm ... bks. See you at the employment tribunal.

I have every sympathy with companies suffering from absentee problems. Pulling sickies is rife and should be seen by everyone as being unacceptable.

But confusing genuine sickness with a "disciplinary" problem is daft, and if a company uses a disciplinary process to handle the dismissal of a member of staff who is unable to carry out their duties due to genuine ill health, then they are going to get their arses kicked and rightly so. You don't have to continue to employ someone who can no longer carryout their duties - but you don't pretend it is a failure of discipline on their part.

You think?

I've not suggested dismissing someone out of hand, but that a disciplinary process will be followed ie verbal, written (x2) then dismissal if all within a specific timeframe. I've only ever been to a tribunal twice and won both of them (none were for sickness reasons though).

Tribunlas are interested in the disciplinary process and why this wasn't followed. If it was follwoed they tend not to override any decision made.

For example, if the guy who was caught shagging someone on his desk earlier in the thread didn't get a hearing, right to representation etc and was simpy sacked on the spot, then he would be reinstated. Whereas someone who has been through all facets of the discipliary process and received a verbal, written and final written wrnings and then dismissed would have little chance of success.

[ATG]

R1 Loon said:

You think?

I've not suggested dismissing someone out of hand, but that a disciplinary process will be followed ie verbal, written (x2) then dismissal if all within a specific timeframe. I've only ever been to a tribunal twice and won both of them (none were for sickness reasons though).

Tribunlas are interested in the disciplinary process and why this wasn't followed. If it was follwoed they tend not to override any decision made.

For example, if the guy who was caught shagging someone on his desk earlier in the thread didn't get a hearing, right to representation etc and was simpy sacked on the spot, then he would be reinstated. Whereas someone who has been through all facets of the discipliary process and received a verbal, written and final written wrnings and then dismissed would have little chance of success.

You are still confusing ill health with discipline. They are clearly different things and a firm will be considered to be behaving unreasonably if it conflates the two. You can't just issue warnings and treat genuine ill health as though it were a disciplinary failure. You will need to show you have behaved reasonably and that's going to include looking at the individual's specific health problems in some detail, considering whether there is another role in the firm they can undertake inspite of their health problems, whether they are likely to recover over a period of time, etc, etc.

If you treat it mechanistaically, e.g. with a three strikes you're out attitude irrespective of the specific circumstances of the individual and their specific health problems, you are going to quite rightly get bked.

[R1 Loon]

ATG said:

You are still confusing ill health with discipline. They are clearly different things and a firm will be considered to be behaving unreasonably if it conflates the two. You can't just issue warnings and treat genuine ill health as though it were a disciplinary failure. You will need to show you have behaved reasonably and that's going to include looking at the individual's specific health problems in some detail, considering whether there is another role in the firm they can undertake inspite of their health problems, whether they are likely to recover over a period of time, etc, etc.

If you treat it mechanistaically, e.g. with a three strikes you're out attitude irrespective of the specific circumstances of the individual and their specific health problems, you are going to quite rightly get bked.

And you seem to be taking one the DDA and applying it as if it is relevant to all absence, for reference it isn't.

If someone has a genuine disability then reasonable steps will be taken to make the working environment more comfortable for the employee, but there are two aspects to this. Firstly that "reasonable" varies significantly depending on the size of organisation, for example a small company would not be expected to spend £1000s on a fancy chair for someone complaining of backache, whereas a multi-nationla may well be. In addition there is no compuleion on any company to create a role for someone. If they are unable to carry out the duties for which they were employed then dismissal is fair under capability.

The disciplianry warnings should not be handed out as confetti and are the effect of a full and thorough investigation after the individual returns to work. If you cna evidence that you completed an interview with the individual after each period of illness, made them aware of the potential consequences of further absence, yet the individual continued to take sik leave, then you are within your rights to invite them for a disciplinary hearing. Each of these is dealt with on its own merits and that is where the differential approach may apply.

If it is deemed that a formal warning is applicable then this happens. the process is then repeated each and every time the employee is off, then there is no case to answer and a Tribunal will not "bk" you, they will instead support your action.

To give you na idea of how this variance can apply, I have someone off with cancer. I have no intention of ever dismissing them, instead looking to find a way to allow the early access to their pension. I do, however, hear a lot of appeals against dismissal from very junior staff whose only defence is "I was ill", which is no defence and I have yet to overturn a dismissal.