Sick Absence Management Briefing

[fishtank]

Sick Absence Management Briefing…

The following briefing is for frontline managers to brief key points around sick absence and for our front line people to clearly understand their roles in terms of contact and providing regular up dates on their well being.

Royal Mail operates the sick absence contact strategy to ensure that we provide the necessary support to all of our employees while absent from work on sick leave. Regular contact provides us with up dates on our people and ensures we can utilise Atos Origin in whatever support is required. It also allows us to look at alternative solutions to ensuring our employees can return to work at the earliest possible opportunity.

To enable this to happen we need our frontline employees and managers to stick rigidly to the following guidelines.

Reporting Sick Leave

: All employees must ensure that their contact details are accurate and current.

: Employees must report for sick leave before their shift starts (for P/T employees, this should be at least 30 minutes before the start of shift).

: All Employees must speak directly to the Resources Unit (XXXXXXXXX). An answering machine operates out-with office hours.

: No text messages or reporting via a third party will be accepted, unless in extreme cases i.e. when it is unavoidable to do otherwise.

: The employee must provide his/her manager with as much detail about their illness and the manager should determine if the employee can be employed on temporary alternative indoor duties. Where this is not practical and an absence is required, the manager and employee must agree a further contact in the next two days.

Continued Sick Leave

When an employee continues with periods of sick absence it is their contractual obligation to keep in contact with their manager, failure to do so could result in their pay being held as the conditions of sick pay state the following:

Conditions on which Sick Pay is Paid

Entitlement to sick pay is always subject to strict observance of the following conditions:

(a) Certificates of incapacity must be received by the business for all sick absences

(b) The business must be satisfied that an employee's absence is necessary and due to genuine illness.(c) The business reserves the right to refuse sick pay if an absence is due to, or is aggravated by, causes within the employee's control, or if the employee has neglected instructions given by a Doctor.

(d) An absent employee shall remain at their normal home address (other than to receive in-patient treatment) unless they have consent of their line or local personnel manager. Employees who are sick immediately before they are due to go on holiday must confirm to their Line Manager that they are going on holiday on the due date (unless sick absence continues and the employee remains at home). We also have to ensure that we are taking the appropriate steps to ensure we are providing the relevant support to our employees by using our health care professionals, Atos Origin. By maintaining this contact we can also look at alternatives. i.e. alternative indoor duties.

In the cases where this process is not followed for no known reason, Managers could take steps to hold an employees pay and change their absence from Sick absence to Unauthorised absence.

Please sign the attendance sheet to confirm that you have been briefed on the sick absence contact strategy and you understand your contractual obligation.

[Lincox]

How do they get away with section D. Employee must stay at his/her own address. If you are off sick, it has nothing to do with Royal Mail where you stay. This is like being placed in Home arrest. This statement is an insult to the freedom and rights of the individual and the union should be looking at this very seriously.

[Stormproof]

How can they expect you to stay at home. When I had depression my Dr advised me to go for walks/bike rides and not to sit around indoors. I hope these rules apply to management aswell!!

[uphillstruggle]

It doesn't mean you can't leave the house at all, it means you should be living at your normal address unless you are in hospital overnight.

It means you shouldn't send a two week sick note from the airport as you step on a plane, and it means you shouldn't go and stay with someone else while off sick.

[POSTMAN]

Please sign the attendance sheet to confirm that you have been briefed on the sick absence contact strategy and you understand your contractual obligation.

No one signed this s**t did they?

[Broxi51]

I think it is an excellent briefing.
If I am off sick and they want me to go back to do light duties although I have a sick line then I will refuse as it says the employer can cancel my sick pay if I neglect the instructions of your doctor

[TrueBlueTerrier]

I think it is an excellent briefing.
If I am off sick and they want me to go back to do light duties although I have a sick line then I will refuse as it says the employer can cancel my sick pay if I neglect the instructions of your doctor

Don't forget though as of Tuesday the "Sick Note" is to be replaced by the "Fit Note". So if you ever go 7 days or plus sick make sure the Doc knows the full details of your work or he might say you are fit.

[fishtank]

Huddle brief: new ‘fit notes’ from April 6
22.03.10 – Guidance from government on changes to GP sick notes

What do I need to know?
• New fit notes are being introduced on 6 April 2010, replacing sick notes from your doctor or GP.
• Evidence shows that work has therapeutic value and is generally good for physical / mental health.
• The fit note has been designed to help UK employees work within the limits of their health.
• It will look similar to the existing the GP certificate, but has a number of changes.
• The aim of the new fit note is to give greater flexibility in managing sickness absence. A range of options are available and could, for example, allow colleagues to carry on with their full indoor duty (e.g. if they were able to sit down to sort mail for 15 minutes out of every hour, rather than for the full shift).
• Fit notes are only the starting point, and not the only option. GPs won’t necessarily be trained in occupational advice.

What’s changing?
• a new option for the doctor or GP to advise if you may be fit for work with some modifications to the work or workplace
• space on the fit note form for your GP to provide information on how your condition will affect your job and various options looking at how you might return to work.
• suggested discussion topics to help you get back to work could now include:
o a phased return to work;
o altered hours;
o amended duties;
o and/or workplace adaptations.
• The fit note aims to encourage return to work if possible, and will have a positive impact on the relationship between managers, and their teams.

What’s staying the same?

• the fit note is still not required until after the seventh calendar day of sickness; up until then sickness is still self certified, as it is now
• the information on the form is still advice to the individual. It is not an instruction to the employer
• employers’ obligations under the Disability Discrimination Act have not changed.
• all ‘business as usual’ absence management processes will continue (i.e. day one referral to Atos for stress, informed consent required to approach Atos, with Advice & Support case management available). Modifications need to be reviewed - every day for first 3 days and then weekly if ongoing for a couple of weeks.

[TrueBlueTerrier]

• the information on the form is still advice to the individual. It is not an instruction to the employer.

So thats managements excuse for current practice of trying to get people back early.

[Lincox]

Uphillstruggle, this is as ambiguous as the 2010 and Beyond document. It clearly states that you should remain at your home address unless you are an inpatient in a hospital. Take it which way you want. It could be home confinement or it could be as you say. Either way if you are seen by the DOM going to the flics on Orange Wednesday as you begin to recuperate, it is an immediate excuse to dock your pay. How far will this company go to aleniate its troops.

[fishtank]

Question: How does this affect attendance management?
Answer: If the fit note states ‘unfit’, the situation is unchanged from current procedure.
Or (a) if the fit note suggests work modifications and these can be made, the colleague returns to work, while the time on modified duties is regarded as normal work for attendance procedure purposes.
Alternatively (b) if the fit note suggests modifications and these can be made, but there is a delay of a few days in organising the modifications, these days remain as absent/sick.
Finally (c) if the fit note suggests modifications and these can’t be made the individual’s absence will still be considered under the attendance procedure (as Royal Mail will be unable to accommodate them in that instance).

[uphillstruggle]

Lincox, it's really not that ambiguous - if you are an INpatient at hospital it means that you are staying there overnight, essentially living at the hospital for the duration of your treatment. The statement was that if this is not the case you should remain at your normal address ie carry on living there. Not disappear to the girfriend's for a week, and not bugger off to the costas for a fornight.
Both of these particular stunts have been pulled by blokes at my office so it's really not that far fetched - also not surprising that someone is saying "well, actually, if you're off on holiday I think I might not pay you that sick pay after all".

The actual policy (rather than the briefing posted here) adds the bit about "...consent from your line manager or local resourcing unit" or similar, for occasions when you are reverting to annual leave from sick leave or a doctor has adivsed you not to travel, meaning you cannot be at your home address (an injury on holiday for example).

I think there's a limit to how specific you can expect any company-wide policy statement to be - scrutiny of any large employer's HR policies would show exactly the same amount of "ambiguity" because you're trying to draft something that covers all eventualities for hundreds of thousands of individuals and I can't see how that's ever going to be possible.

[numan]

(d) An absent employee shall remain at their normal home address (other than to receive in-patient treatment) unless they have consent of their line or local personnel manager.

I would not sign anything that says I need my manager's consent to stay at a family member's home, where I might be cared for while sick. All I need to do is inform him/her where I will be contactable but I do NOT need his/her permission.

[dblad]

It doesn't mean you can't leave the house at all, it means you should be living at your normal address unless you are in hospital overnight.

It means you shouldn't send a two week sick note from the airport as you step on a plane, and it means you shouldn't go and stay with someone else while off sick.

So if a single person who lives alone cant stay at his/her parents/brother/sister/childrens homes to be cared for..rubbish, we work for this company we dont live for them, if i'm ill and need to be looked after in someone elses home then that is where i will go regardless of what they say, a sick note means your doctor says your unfit for work, what gives these non doctors the right to say otherwise.

[fishtank]

The attendance procedure states quite clearly the following.

Absences due to sickness are assumed to be genuine.


And yet this management breifing states quite clearly the following

(b) The business must be satisfied that an employee's absence is necessary and due to genuine illness.(c) The business reserves the right to refuse sick pay if an absence is due to, or is aggravated by, causes within the employee's control, or if the employee has neglected instructions given by a Doctor.

I think this shows the direction Royal Mail are heading with respect to natural wastage and the loss of 24,000 jobs.
ET payouts are seldom anywhere close to VR payouts.