Do you know what percentage of days you are losing through absenteeism among your employees? Or how that breaks down between sickness and other reasons?

And what would you consider a good or an acceptable figure? A surprising number of employers never do any serious analysis, but they should. It’s the first step in plugging the drain of resources and ensuring that your business isn’t harming its employees.

So first, do the analysis. Now you know that you are losing, let’s say, seven per cent of the days you pay for due to sickness. Is that good or bad?

As a rule of thumb, three per cent and below would be good. The more it gets beyond three per cent, the worse it is.

Above seven per cent and you should have serious concerns. More than ten per cent and you have something of a crisis.

If it’s at a high level, get help; it will pay for itself. If you are within safe levels and are just trying to get absence leave to the recommended three per cent level, what should you do?

The most important action you can take is the “return to work interview.” After the person returns to work (and it must be on the same day), the person’s manager sits down in a quiet, private room to ask how they are, why they were off and if there is anything that can be done to help them.

This is not a Gestapo-style grilling but the act of a caring employer. This is helpful in all kinds of sickness from the genuine absence of an employee with usually good attendance, through the perpetually sick employee with a long-term problem, right down to the malingering little b***er who takes a day off sick if it’s a bit cloudy outside – the notorious “glue bed” syndrome.

It allows employers to show genuine concern and offer appropriate assistance and it keeps them in tune with staff problems. Who is struggling with a long-term problem? Who is prone to odd days off? Who is taking the dog for a walk?

Employers can use the interview to pick up on unusual trends that may indicate a problem in the workplace that is causing people to take time off work. But it also prevents the process becoming an anonymous way of taking a few extra days holiday. Putting a lame excuse on the sickness form is one thing but lying to a manager can become very uncomfortable.

And what about those few who seem to have endless Fridays and Mondays off? You already know the reasons – flu, upset tummy, bad back.

You might as well pre-print their self-cert forms to save them time. Do you call them into the office and ball them out? Well, no. You can’t say whether they were sick or not. That’s the job for a doctor – and even they’d be hard pushed to say the employee wasn’t sick. So what can you do?

Use breach of contract. You promise to pay the employee and they promise to come into work. If they fail to come into work they are in breach of contract and, if they fail to remedy the breach, you have a right to terminate the contract.

Okay, you can’t terminate it for a few sick days but persistent absence would form a breach of contract and can result in termination if you follow the right procedure.

This is where a sickness and absence policy comes in.

First, you bring to the attention of the person that there is a problem and that you want to see their attendance improve. Ask if there is an underlying reason for their absence.

If not, use a phrase such as, “is there any reason why, in the future, your attendance shouldn’t be as good as everyone else’s?”

If there is a reason, go the company doctor route – if you can help them with a medical condition then you should.

If the answer is “no, no reason”, they are telling you they have no underlying excuse for being absent as often as they are.

If it continues, you should look for a doctor’s opinion. If the person has a genuine medical problem, the doctor will tell you whether the person will be able to return to work in the future and when. After that, it’s dictated by your long-term sickness policy – which can extend as much as six months on full pay and six months on half pay.

If the absences are not due to any underlying cause, a doctor will say there is no medical reason why this person should not attend work in the future. You tell your employee that further absence will result in an escalation of the process and may ultimately lead to dismissal.

And what about when you’re sure that the person wasn’t sick at all? Can you prove it? And, ultimately, that means to the satisfaction of an employment tribunal.

You know the kind of thing – you open your front door to find your new decorator is also one of your staff, supposedly off with a bad back. This is not genuine absence. The employee is obtaining money from the company under false pretences. It is fraud and as such should be dealt with as an act of gross misconduct for which instant dismissal is frequently the penalty.

Tough words from Gill Switalski, first published in December 2002.

Related tags: monday, lateness, absence, tardiness,