Is this legal in employment?

[Isthebusstillrunning]

An hourly paid job that has a 'bonus rate' attached to the hourly rate. Paid monthly, each month you'll be paid the bonus rate as long as you aren't off sick. If you're sick or absent, you'll lose the bonus rate.
Aibu to think this is not legal? It's punishing people for being sick.
Ofc there are always people who take the piss and skive sometimes but we're human, sometimes we are unwell and it cannot be helped.
I find it outrageous and have never heard this before.

That's a good point.
And I have never been a fan of 100% absence incentives in school.
I hate this whole shaming and stigma around being off sick.

Family member passing would be compassionate leave - not sickness. That’s how it works at my company.

I used to get an attendance bonus. My train was late one day, I was late by about 5 mins and that's it, no bonus that month. It is what it is.

Having previously worked in care, there was another dodgy practice.
You had to ring the on call number to ring in sick, fair enough. However the on call team would then put you through to the management who would beg and persuade you to come in as they were 'really short staffed ".
It was manipulative and took advantage of people.

I've worked in a factory with an attendance bonus. Friday hours were 8-2pm and sometimes people decided to start their weekend early and just get docked 5.5 hours. An issue when you're running a production line. The attendance bonus was to ensure people turned up for shifts five days a week. (It worked)

How does that work if the medical condition is covered by DDA?

In an hourly paid job, especially on a zero hours contract or similar I expect they get quite a lot of absence.
They specifically are not punishing sickness, they are rewarding commitment. Anyone who is genuinely sick once in a while will be fine, but it will really discourage those people who take a day every month.

Look I think it's a stupid policy and I'd hate for it to be pushed on me, but (and this is a big but) it's a bonus, you're not losing basic pay if you go off sick. I used to work in insurance sales which was basic pay plus commission. Basic pay was bare minimum, but that's what you counted on and budgeted for each month and you worked towards hitting your targets. If a sales person doesn't hit their targets, they don't lose their pay, they lose their bonus. This is just a different type of target. It's entitled to expect a bonus for not hitting a target, sorry.
Again, I think it's a stupid policy and your employers are clearly dicks.

It came under 'absence' so honestly not sure if compassionate leave would be accepted. I think it's basically anything that isn't a pre booked holiday.

That isn’t what’s happening. It’s incentivising people for perfect attendance.

I'd be thinking along the lines of indirect discrimination against disabled people and pregnant women.

If we take a day or two off, we already lose pay with it being zero hours, as SSP is only paid after day 3 I think.

Where’s the incentive not to call in sick then? I’m sure if the employer found losing ons day bonus was incentive enough, they’d do that.

In many jobs, last minute sickness puts extra work onto those who are present. So perhaps the bonus is also inadvertently rewarding them for picking up the slack - for both genuine and fake colleague sickness.

I think that conscientious employees can be completely unrealistic about some people. We used to actually record in a book who had died when people needed time off for funerals, after a few conversations between shift managers revealed that one guy seemed to have more than the average number of grandparents! 🤣

True.
They should do something like 95%, I don't think striving for 100% perfection is fair or realistic.

Trying to persuade you to come in is out of order....but In my workplace you have to call your manager that's the rule.

I just don't believe in incentives around sickness. Normally if you have more than 3 days in 6 months or whatever it requires a meeting to address why. It's barely anything to begin with.

Anyway, I guess it's just one of those things.

You haven’t lost anything as you’re still getting your wage.

A bonus is a bonus, not mandatory. Different companies have difference ways of doing this - in some everyone gets the same amount, in others, it’s performance related.

You not being penalised for being sick, but being rewarded for attending.

How is this true but also the fact you're looking after sick people? If you're absent someone else will need to do the work.

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/bonus

Hope this helps.

Not really.

Thanks to the others though.

Any firm with even one HR rep would tell managers that you can't apply this to employees with a disability or pregnancy where the absence relates to either of these things. There have been numerous tribunals and the employers do not win.

My years of experience know that you get a rather substantial group of employees checking their sickness % is at 97% and working out they’ve got 2% more sickness time that they genuinely feel they are owed!

Not just knowing they can get away with. The language really is, “I’ve got 3 more sickness days I can use up.”

I know I sound cynical, but this is my experience coming from the shop floor and working with others who have also done so. And managing those who don’t even try to hide it. I’ve worked in HR and had people pop their head in and say, “Testina, could you check and see his many sick days I’ve got owing “

That is true.
However they are already losing a day's pay due to it being a 0 hours contract, and no SSP for first 2 consecutive days.
I imagine it's the case in paid sickness jobs though.

Yes it's legal. And no, you don't lose anything. You just don't achieve the bonus if you're off sick.

Absence is generally broken down into authorised absence which includes holiday, maternity, paternity, bereavement etc, and unauthorised absence which consists of sickness, emergency parental leave etc.