A friend is currently on their 3rd day of sick leave after developing sudden lower back pain. They work part time (20 hours pw) for a large retail company.

Said company have a pretty strict and thorough managing absence policy masquarading under the guise of Duty of Care and as such when friend returns they will be subjected to an interview and as they have had one previous day off within a set period they will activate a trigger which will probably result in a warning.

Said person has worked for 35 years with an unblemished record ( only 18 months with this company) and his absences are genuine.

So, can he insist that this current absence be regarded as annual leave and therefore avoid diciplinary/punitive action or can he only request this and it is entirely at the companys discretion?

Thanks

if genuine whats he/she worried about

35 year ‘unblemished’ record means even less now you point out they are the sort of person to try to hide sick absence by using annual leave.

a friend? your mates are always in trouble P – least its not breaking a bike this time 😉

I think its because despite genuine illness they will have, for the first time ever, triggered diciplinary action**. Its not like they punched a blind kitten 😉

I understand that legally you can choose to take annual leave whilst on sick leave but Im not sure if you can in lieu.

** verbal warning

Disciplinary procedures like that are 99% of the time put there so that they have a way to deal with the shirkers.

Genuine sickness/injury/pain will mean that the truth of it will shine through in the ‘back to work’ interview and there will be no bother.

If of course, there is still bother, then I suggest ‘your friend’ finds somewhere else to work that isn’t lorded over by unreasonable bastards.

Dave

also, if your friend has multiple genuine absences, resulting in multiple warnings which lead to yourhis dismissal youhe would have a strong case for wrongful dismissal.

personally, I wouldn’t let it bother me you him

You can not be off sick , and then use holidays .
If HR suggest this , join a union!

Offering to take it as holiday could sound like a guilty conscience- the genuinely ill should have nothing to fear but if they do, it’s because they’re working for the sort of company where you can’t win either way.

He hasnt any history of absences other than the current and previous day. Both are/were genuine and he has a perfect performance record otherwise.

In all his working life he has never faced any type of rebuke or disciplinary action and I suppose he is a tad miffed at falling foul of a strict company policy at this stage of his working life!

Using (sacrificing) annual leave to avoid this penalty is preferable to him.

I think Northwind may be onto something….

If the company is paying sick pay he’d be mental to take leave. No-one will care about his record if it’s a one off.

They are seosamh77 – its just this issue of an automated warning that miffs him.

My work are the same. I’m on a trigger point now and have been before. I had a back to work interview and then they referred me to Occupational Health who asked if they could access my doctor’s records. Then you have 3 months where you have to try to be healthy and then nothing.
My sick was genuine so i’m not worried.
It’s not proper discliplinary action so don’t worry. Just a formality to get the people who are off for months on end and to treat everyone the same.
A good manager won’t let you use leave in place of sickness.

What we don’t know is who the organisation is and how they got to this process. It may be that they have had a long time of “not convincing” illness from a disproportionately high percentage of the work force and decided on what, in this thread, seems an especially draconian policy. If the policy has been there from the start because they are, as an organisation, callous and uncaring then yes, not very good, consider escaping to somewhere less Dickensian. But if you are genuinely ill there should be nothing to fear and the return to work interview will clear it up perfectly well. Agree with the others though – do not take annual leave to cover it. That’s what sick leave is there to cover, so use it if you are sick / ill. The organisation won’t give you anything for being a martyr.

dknwhy – Member

My work are the same. I’m on a trigger point now and have been before.

I must admit, I had a lot of fun with the bank after I broke my hip- I returned to work earlier than I had to, but because I was far from fit I ended up being off every couple of weeks- on a bad day, I could barely leave the house. End result- as HR put it “More single day absences than we’ve ever seen one person have”. So all the algorithms and policies say “skiver!” and I got the full works, which every single time ended with them contacting my doctor and my doctor laughing at them and offering to sign me off for 3 months if that was any use.

Suppose you had to be there, but it was great fun. Most people were nervous of the first interview, I was up into double figures.

To play the game with HR pick a different reason for absence .
Ruins the ability to forfill contract line
P.S. join a union

Did your friend ‘self certify’ their illness or do they have a doctors note? Where I am if you are off for 3 days or more without a note from the doctors then you are obliged to talk to somebody about it.

I am not sure what the problem is with the duty of care and occupational health schemes. It should work with both the employers and employees interests in mind.

If the employee has back trouble then as an employer there is value to be gained from setting up an interview to discover if anything in the working environment can be changed to assist with short term rehabilitation and long term prevention. Most companies want their staff to be able to work although I grant you there can be times where it sure doesn’t feel like they want you there.

HR is there to protect the company just as much as it is there to help you, if they can avoid law suits by insisting on people going through a duty of care process after time off work then they will.

I won’t repeat the don’t swap holiday for sickness, you can I believe do the opposite. If you are ill whilst on you holiday you can request the company to take it as sick leave, just how you would go about doing this is beyond me though.

as they have had one previous day off within a set period they will activate a trigger which will probably result in a warning.

You seem to insinuate this ‘warning’ will have all sorts of dire consequences (and the reason for wanting to take holidays to avoid). Id suggest the warning will likely be a letter stating policy, that they will monitor your future absences for 6month and any (even 1 day) will need discussed. If your actually ill then this should be no concern at all. If your expecting to be off regularly during this period (as per example from poster above) then the employer will just want to know so they can work with to come to solution that suits both parties.

Sounds like your ‘friend’ is running under a lot of presumptions of second-hand gossip. Get them to ask for a copy of policy and if required have someone else read it to ease concerns.

Just go in and bleed / puke / whatever all over the office carpet, then go home. They will then understand.

I got a verbal warning once. Thats all it was…you’ve had two instances of sick (a single day and then a three day) within a certain period. It went along the lines of, ‘I am giving you a verbal warning, if you continue to go sick there is a long process of written warnings before anything happens’. Get back to work!

Sour grapes in my case as I was ill, but it coincided with my gf (now wife) being home from uni so they assumed I was skiving. Wife and MiL having both worked for said company, were more put out than I was 🙂