Why do employers count operations towards periods of absence

jjj1980

All the places I have worked, if your absence was related to the same condition as a previous absence within a rolling 12 months, it was not counted as a new "period". Obviously, taking the reason for the illness into account.


I had a couple of occasions off sick with gallstone complications and then 3-4 weeks off for a hospital stay and recovery from gallbladder removal. This was counted as one period, with a total number of days that took all the periods into account. As the HR department said, it was a known, diagnosed condition that only surgery was going to resolve so they did not feel it fair to penalise for occasions of been too unwell whilst waiting for the operation.


Also, different employer, when I broke my leg and for all the follow ups until discharge, they just added how ever many new days I needed to take off due to problems with that leg to the original total following the breaks. So again, it shows as one period.