Employment issues

naaads_xo

I’m going to explain the situation very briefly. I was off sick last year a few times, after having a welfare meeting and another meeting to discuss my contract, occupational health, my manager has said that moving forward I can only have one sickness occurrence every 3 months, is this a rule that an employer can put in place? 

General_Grant

naaads_xo said:

I’m going to explain the situation very briefly. I was off sick last year a few times, after having a welfare meeting and another meeting to discuss my contract, occupational health, my manager has said that moving forward I can only have one sickness occurrence every 3 months, is this a rule that an employer can put in place? 

Well, they can't actually stop you being sick but they are perfectly able to rule that they will not continue employing someone who has more than one sickness absence in any three-month period. 

That actually seems quite reasonable to me and presumably is as generous as it is because of the involvement of OH.

naaads_xo

General_Grant said:

naaads_xo said:

I’m going to explain the situation very briefly. I was off sick last year a few times, after having a welfare meeting and another meeting to discuss my contract, occupational health, my manager has said that moving forward I can only have one sickness occurrence every 3 months, is this a rule that an employer can put in place? 

Well, they can't actually stop you being sick but they are perfectly able to rule that they will not continue employing someone who has more than one sickness absence in any three-month period. 

That actually seems quite reasonable to me and presumably is as generous as it is because of the involvement of OH.

The involvement with OH was due to a separate health issue non-related to my sickness absence. I was the one who made the request to be referred to OH so that work could provide reasonable work adjustments.

HampshireH

They can't stop you taking sick days but they can tell you the consequences of doing so so frequently. It sounds like they have done this 

A sick day every 3 months seems generous as an allowance.

General_Grant

HampshireH said:

They can't stop you taking sick days but they can tell you the consequences of doing so so frequently. It sounds like they have done this 

A sick day every 3 months seems generous as an allowance.

It's more generous than that - a sickness occurrence every 3 months.  So that could be a week off, for example.

naaads_xo

General_Grant said:

HampshireH said:

They can't stop you taking sick days but they can tell you the consequences of doing so so frequently. It sounds like they have done this 

A sick day every 3 months seems generous as an allowance.

It's more generous than that - a sickness occurrence every 3 months.  So that could be a week off, for example.

No they stated, one day of a sickness occurrence. So one day every 3 months.

General_Grant

naaads_xo said:

General_Grant said:

HampshireH said:

They can't stop you taking sick days but they can tell you the consequences of doing so so frequently. It sounds like they have done this 

A sick day every 3 months seems generous as an allowance.

It's more generous than that - a sickness occurrence every 3 months.  So that could be a week off, for example.

No they stated, one day of a sickness occurrence. So one day every 3 months.

You originally wrote "I can only have one sickness occurrence every 3 months, "
Obviously HampshireH has better thought-reading powers than I do and knew it was one day being referenced.

Flatfacedcat

naaads_xo said:

my manager has said that moving forward I can only have one sickness occurrence every 3 months, is this a rule that an employer can put in place? 

I live and work within EU, not UK, however such a statement from a manager seems absurd to me. While on one hand is not possible to control when we get sick, on the other hand I know for sure that there is a law which states clearly what is the total amount of days per year that a person can take as paid leave from work because of sickness. And I also know for sure that this amount is more than 1 day of sickness every 3 months.

Grumpy_chap

Flatfacedcat said:

 I know for sure that there is a law which states clearly what is the total amount of days per year that a person can take as paid leave from work because of sickness. And I also know for sure that this amount is more than 1 day of sickness every 3 months.

What law is that?
SSP is less than full pay in many cases and also would not cover illness events of only one day.
What amount of sickness does that law stipulate?

Undervalued

Flatfacedcat said:

naaads_xo said:

my manager has said that moving forward I can only have one sickness occurrence every 3 months, is this a rule that an employer can put in place? 

I live and work within EU, not UK, however such a statement from a manager seems absurd to me. While on one hand is not possible to control when we get sick, on the other hand I know for sure that there is a law which states clearly what is the total amount of days per year that a person can take as paid leave from work because of sickness. And I also know for sure that this amount is more than 1 day of sickness every 3 months.

Well I don't so perhaps your would like to cite the laws you believe say that?

I think you will struggle!

theoretica

It is very standard for employers to warn employees that their sickness record is cause for concern and continued absences above a certain level will move to the next stage of a capability process.  My work, we need to do extra paperwork for anyone off four times in a rolling 12 months (or one longer period), which is slightly more flexible than once every 3 months, but a similar average. 

However, have you been formally given this limit and told what the consequences could be? Was it minuted in the meeting or just something the manager said afterwards? Employers, especially if larger ones, do need to follow their procedures and not just make things up as they go along.