sickness absence employment law

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sickness absence law

For advice on sickness absence employment law look no further. This is what we do. The first place to look to understand what your employment rights are around sickness absence employment law is to start by looking at what your employment contract says and any employee handbook that you have been provided with by your employer. This is where you will find information about what to do if you have to take sickness absence. It is really important that you comply with your employer’s requirements about reporting sickness absence in accordance with their workplace rules and that you provide the necessary medical information in support of any absence. If you don’t you might inadvertently breach your contract and expose yourself to disciplinary action. If you cannot find this information, ask your employer or the HR team if your company has one.

What else do you need to know about sickness absence employment law? At the current time there have been some modifications to the rules and to statutory sick pay because of the pandemic. You can find information about this here:

GOV – Statutory Sick Pay

But because this is new to us all there may still be areas of difficulty. For example, if you are unable to return to work after holiday because you have to quarantine: is this unpaid leave or sickness or will you have to take more holiday? These are areas where confusion is likely to arise because of the novelty of the situation. Start by looking at some of the valuable resources you can find online:

ACAS – Absence From Work

Sickness absence law means that if you have booked holiday but then are unable to take it because of illness your employer must re-categorise your leave as sickness absence. You will have to provide a sick note, but your leave should be added back to your holiday entitlement for the year. Similarly, if your employer does not permit carry over of annual leave once the leave year ends and you have been unable to take all your leave because of disability your employer should permit you to carry the unused leave forward.

For more information on your annual leave rights and disability start here:

https://www.acas.org.uk/checking-sick-pay/sick-pay-and-holiday-pay

We deal with issues arising from employment law long term sickness because often a long absence from work will mean that you are Equality Act protected around disability. For more on whether you are likely to be disabled according to the Equality Act you should visit the following links:

Equality Human Rights – Employer Code page 30 onwards Disability

ACAS – Disability

GOV – Equality Act 2010

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