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If you fall ill, you are entitled to take time off work until you recover. There are a number of rules and regulations under the law which determine your rights relating to sickness and leave, and it may benefit you to be fully aware of them.
If you do not inform your employer of your illness within the time limits they set (or within seven days if they don't specify a deadline), you will no longer be legally entitled to sick pay, unless it says otherwise in your contract. You may also be breaching your terms of employment if you do not follow their procedure, which could lead to you getting into trouble at work and even losing your job.
As an employee taking time off work due to illness, you may be entitled to sick pay. There are two standard forms of sick pay:
Your employer should give you Statutory Sick Pay if you are classed as an employee, have reported for duty at least once, and have average pre-tax weekly earnings not less than the Lower Earnings Limit of £112 per week. You must be off work sick for a minimum of four days before you can receive Statutory Sick Pay. You must also let your employer know about your sickness within the time limit they set in their sickness policy (or within 7 days if they do not set a deadline), otherwise you may lose out.
The rate of Statutory Sick Pay is currently £88.45 per week for a maximum of 28 weeks in any period of sickness.
If you are receiving Statutory Maternity Pay, you will not be entitled to SSP. Also, if you have already been paid 28 weeks of SSP this year, your employer does not have to give you any more.
Another reason for which you may be disqualified is if you have had 3 or more years of what are known as "linked periods" of sickness. A linked period of sickness is when you have at least 4 days off work sick within 8 weeks of another period of taking at least 4 days off work sick.
Your employer may have a special scheme in place for injuries or illnesses received in the workplace; the amount of pay is not ordinarily related to the type of sickness or injury.
In the event that your employer is responsible for your incapacity, you may be eligible to bring a personal injury claim against your workplace. Both physical and psychological injuries are claimable, including stress and depression. For further information regarding this, consult a solicitor or trade union representative.
If your employer has not paid you either type of sick pay when you think they should have, or you think that they have paid you the wrong amount, you should bring this up with them and ask them to fix the problem. If your employer has failed to pay you the appropriate amount of sick pay, they may have committed breach of contract or unauthorised deduction of wages. If they do not rectify the issue you may be able to take them to an employment tribunal or to County Court.
If you have been absent from work because of an illness which lasted seven days or less, your employer can ask you to self-certify your illness by completing a form. This is known as self-certification.
If you have been off work sick for more than seven days, you will need to get an official Statement of Fitness to Work ('fit note') from a GP or the doctor that treated you.
As well as serving as evidence of your illness, a fit note allows a doctor to supply information on whether your employer needs to make any adjustments to help you when you go back to work. The doctor may suggest ways you can return to work more efficiently; for example, they may advise that you should temporarily be permitted to work reduced hours or relieved of your more stressful duties. They may even advise that you be given more time off work to recover.
Employers are best advised to initiate a return to work chat, acting as an informal assessment, once the employee has returned to the workplace, with the goal of:
Employers often keep a record of sickness. This record can include the number or sick days taken, the reason for the absence and detail of when in the day/week/month sickness is taken. This type of standard sickness record would normally be held in your personnel file, and should be available through your employer's Human Resources department.
In the event that an employee is suffering from a long term illness, a responsible employer should:
The employer may wish to talk about a change in work and working arrangements, as well as the length of time that the role can be left open for. If the employee should become disabled due to their illness, ‘reasonable adjustments’ can be expected in their working environment that may allow them to continue in their role with some modification of their surroundings or workload.
When returning to work, employers should put in place a 'getting back to work' programme. Such a programme should involve:
Employees can be dismissed while on long term sickness. Employers should however only consider this as a last alternative after considering:
Even when off sick, employees accrue holiday entitlement as though they were working. If an employee would lose out on any leave to which they are statutorily entitled because they are off sick during the last period in which they could have taken it, up to 20 days of this should roll over to the next holiday year.
If an employee is not entitled to sick pay, or if they wish to do so for any other reason, they may take a period of sickness as holiday instead. The opposite is also true, in a sense – falling ill immediately before or during a holiday allows an employee to instead take that holiday as sick leave, and are entitled to take the intended period of holiday at a different time.
If an employee believes that they have been the victim of an unfair dismissal as a consequence of long-term sickness, they may take their case to an employment tribunal.