With Absenteeism on the Rise What Can You Do to Prevent Anyone Abusing the Method?

The stage of absenteeism by way of frequent quick-phrase sickness absence is an concern of significant problem to most businesses. The employer need to deal very carefully and sympathetically with disabled employees and these who are absent via long-expression illness but businesses are entitled to adopt rigorous standards when it arrives to dealing with frequent brief-expression absence for a variety of unrelated factors.

The first strategy of dealing with absenteeism is by means of monetary incentives. The employer may well month to month bonuses for 100% attendance and, at the exact same time, pay no sick pay at all for the first a few days of sickness absence.

The option is to adopt an absenteeism policy and comply with a disciplinary approach. The law permits employers to concern warnings and then dismiss workers who fall short to meet the established specifications of attendance. For case in point, some polices supply that staff will beissued with a created warning soon after 4 separate durations of sickness absence in any rolling twelve month time period. The employee progresses to a ultimate published warning after two further periods of sickness absence in the following 6 months and is then dismissed if there are two additional intervals of sickness absence in the last 6 months. This variety of absenteeism policy will generally be upheld by the Employment Tribunal and any dismissal will be discovered to be fair.

In buy to justify dismissal on the basis of the disciplinary approach, the employer will require to have complied with certain standards including:-

(a) The employer should set out attendance criteria in a policy manufactured known to staff to ensure that personnel know wherever they stand and that there is consistency among personnel.
(b) The employee should not be provided warnings or be dismissed without a formal disciplinary hearing and a proper to appeal.
(c) The employer needs tocheck out that the frequent brief phrase absences are not all linked and are part of one underlying issue. If there is an underlying situation, then the employer ought to follow a different (and much more complicated) method prior to dismissal.
(d) The employer ought to suppose that all illness absences are genuine. The allegation that a specific sickness absence is not genuine is an allegation of misconduct and is a fairly separate issue.
(e) There are specific sorts of sickness absence that want to be disregarded as component of an absenteeism policy and this contains any illness absence relating to pregnancy as properly as time off to look right after dependents and for numerous sorts of statutory depart.

Assuming that the over problems are satisfied and the employer has properly followed an established absenteeism policy, the worker who is dismissed is practically certain to shed an unfair dismissal declare. In practice, the introduction of a rigorous absenteeism policy can have a positive influence on attendance amounts.