New employers checking my sick days

[MostIneptThatEverStepped]

Can anyone shed light on whether this might cause my job offer to be withdrawn?

My referees have been asked to provide info about my sick days and while most of the time I'm pretty average, in both my current and previous job I had a period of time off for stress. The first time was caused by the job and my referee will say so, the second time was in my current job when my GP signed me off to get sober (which I did and have been a model employee since, not that I did anything bad before!!)

Is it possible that they will withdraw their offer? I'm feeling quite anxious about this...it was a big decision to leave my comfort zone and it will be crushingly disappointing.

How much time off sick did you have in your last job?

They might do, yeah.

You’d be protected by discrimination laws if you have a legal disability though. Always a risky move to ask about sick leave and then withdraw an offer on the back of it.

It's a very normal thing to ask for. I've never applied for a job where i wasn't asked, but equally I've never heard of anyone being followed up for it either. At worst I expect they'd refer you to occupational health, but again I've never heard of it actually happening unless it's an ongoing severe condition. If number of sick days did affect future job prospects, then anyone who's left a stressful workplace that affected their health would be unable to find future employment, which seems ridiculous.

In the last one before my current one, about 2 months but this was directly caused by work related stress-I was covering another role after a colleague left and wasn't replaced.
In my current one, about 3 weeks.

No disability here but so suffer from depression/anxiety.

Good point Little, how would you ever leave a job you hated?!

Just bumping

Because it is not usual to ask about sick days. Usually just standard references. We would advise employers not to ask about sick days to be honest.

If you have depression and anxiety you may very well be disabled under the equality act.

Thanks So, i had only ever heard about it happening on here previously. I didn't think it was done routinely in my sector.
I guess I just sit and wait to see if they send my contract etc.

I wish the NHS were stricter about checking previous sickness records!

In my smallish HCP area, where at least someone knows someone who knows of the potential employee, and their eye-watering piss-take sickness record, yet we employ them and are all aghast when they take the first 3 Monday's off. Always single day incidents, always attached to a legitimate rota'ed day off.

Unfortunately the two people who might investigate are serial mick-takers themselves.

It's really bad for morale.

Personally, I believe that if there was a culture of keeping tabs on certain patterns and frequencies of sickness taking, far fewer people would do it, and far less irritation would be felt for those who still took days off sick as they'd be far more likely to be legit.

I think your record of solid periods of time off would cause far less of an issue than if it had been one day in 10 for the past year, myself, so I very much doubt you'll have your job offer withdrawn.

Well done in getting sober. That's an achievement in itself!

Congratulations for getting sober! I don't know much about UK laws so sadly I can't comment on that, just wanted to acknowledge your achievement. (and also be a little shocked that checking sick day records for an applicant is even legal. It wouldn't be here!)

Thanks Miljah, that makes a lot of sense that this is a good way of weeding out chronic sick day users.

And thanks re the sobriety! 😊

Thank you Damn, that's very kind of you to comment on that.
I'm a bit shocked re the sick days too.

This isn’t standard practice across all employers. In fact if you work for a big conpany they will often refuse to provide sick leave information.

It this a role that requires enhanced due diligence?

a single lengthy episode of sickness is indicative of an issue that was treated (you could have had surgery eg). That's generally going to be acceptable to them (and they can't ask you what it was for). What they're looking out for are multiple single days off and they should be smart enough in the way they're asking to identify that (eg "how many individual episodes of sickness" instead of / as well as "how many days off in total" over the period)

When I applied for this job I had a recent, very lengthy period of sick leave for work-related stress (related to that specific job). Occupational Health called me and asked about it - I explained the circumstances, that there was no ongoing treatment or issue and that I had successfully returned to that job (albeit for the shortest time possible before leaving!). It seemed to be fine and I’ve never had a single day off for stress at this job so proved my point really.

Teddybear no, it's a fairly menial HE role.

Archie now that I'm getting that idea, I'm feeling more reassured.

Michael that's interesting. Seems slightly dodgy that they would be able to ask but if there's nothing to hide...I'm glad it worked out well for you.

Thanks for all the replies so far, I'm getting a bit of perspective and hopefully will look back and wonder what I was getting my knickers in a twist for.

Last company I worked for would not disclose this type of information. On references they would only confirm dates worked and job title.

It’s fairly standard in my workplace (NHS). I’ve been refused when I had several episodes in a year (even though I had underlying stress), when I had long term episodes with a specific issue they were okay.

We are asked and it is checked up on- a colleague was given a deferred start date due to unacceptable absence. She was in an agency position within the force anyway so remained in that for a period of six months.

I assumed it was routine

I have been asked, I suspect it's to establish if a potential employee takes a lot of odd days rather than proper sick leave which they have recovered from

Interesting, quite a varying range of experiences.
I'll just have to wait it out and see if they come back to me about it.

I had 9 months off. Started off with a broken leg and foot, which led to depression. My new employer gave me a ring to ask why I had been off so long, and I was honest. It was completely fine and now been in my current role 2 years with no sick days. Try not to worry.