What guidance can I give my client to manage this?
Employers are encouraged to have in place absence management procedures, to help them gain an overview of absence levels in their organisation, manage excessive absences, and put in place reasonable adjustments for disabled employees. An absence management procedure can include:
- Return to work interviews
- Informal discussion of absence levels
- Formal proceedings to discuss concerns with absence levels, and notify the employee that if improvement is not seen action will be taken
- Formal action following formal proceedings, which eventually could lead to dismissal.
Your client should therefore look to create and implement such a procedure, if they don’t have this in place already.
Key to managing absence is setting out expectations. Of course, ideally no employees would be off sick, but this is not possible. However, reasonable expectations of average absence levels are good to set out, and act as triggers for action should absence levels exceed them.
Some employees, however, may have to be absent due to a requirement placed upon them, such as covid isolation, or a temporary condition such as pregnancy that impacts their ability to attend work consistently. To these employees, absence triggers should not be applied, as it would be inappropriate, and in the case of pregnancy, discriminatory to do so. It is also worth noting to your client that an employee who has suffered a miscarriage remains protected as though still pregnant for two weeks after the event.
Alternatively, some employees, may have high absence levels due to a condition that affects their ability to perform day to day tasks on a long-term basis, and as such constitute a disability. Your client will need to act carefully where this is the case, so as not to treat these employees less favourably than their colleagues. An employee may not disclose such an illness, however, where it is obvious from their absence levels, reasons for absence, and observation within the workplace (such as employees with stomach issues that cause them to be away from their workstation for lengthy periods), then it is reasonable to assume this is the case.
Where there is a disability, the Equality Act 2010 requires employers to make reasonable adjustments to accommodate the disability, to enable to employee to perform their duties. Reasonable adjustments also apply to absence triggers, and depending on the nature and severity of the disability these may need to be either adjusted for the individual circumstances, or removed all together.
There are many benefits to effective absence management, and as long as your client is careful with the above, they should start to see improvements once they implement it.
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