Sick pay and phased return to work

[Deleted User]

Its normal practice for phasing to be paid for from outstanding A/L, did you have the A/L to cover it?

concerneduk2020

When you say you expected to return on full pay do you mean:
option a: for example your job is 35 hours a week. You’re currently working less than 35 hours because you’re on a phased return but you expected to be paid the full salary for a 35 hour week?

Option b: your pay for the hours you are working is reduced?

if option b - you should receive full pay for the hours you are working, and then any sick pay policy would be applied to the time you are not working.

If option a- you are not working a full time job at the moment so shouldn’t be receiving full pay. Either other people are covering your workload who need paying, or the company is making do with lower quality/lower output until you return. It’s not reasonable to expect the business to pay you full pay in these circumstances, especially since it sounds like they’ve been more than generous with sick pay up to now.

re occupational health, it costs businesses money to make OH referrals and they have to pay for missed appointments. Why would the company risk spending more money on another appointment if you missed the first one?

FBaby

So you had a long sick pay previously, then 6 months off at full pay. Coincidentally, your back problem is sorted at just the 6 months mark at which stage your pay would be halved. 

You will have accrued holiday entitlement, which seems to be school holiday, so you'll be off for 6 weeks soon enough. 

And still you expected to be paid for full hours, working reduced hours when coming back.

It sounds like your employer thought you'd missed enough. Arrangement for paid return is at their discretion. Its you who should have asked them what that arrangement was, not them to tell you because you assumed it would be full pay. 

Savvy_Sue

To be fair to the OP, whenever one of my colleagues has pay reduced for any reason, I do ask their LM to let them know that this is happening and what the reduction will be. So I'd say

• you should not assume that a phased return will be on full pay, and therefore
• you should ask what you will be paid during a phased return
• UNLESS your manager tells you ahead of time what the payment arrangements will be. 

The last couple I've seen at work have been the employee working half days and taking a/l for the other half day. That's in situations where there is leave available to be taken.