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.

But in rewarding someone for not being ill then you have to make sure it's fair
I'm immunocompromised so my sickness triggers are higher than most people. I would never do a year without being sick because my immune system stops that idea!

Because it isn’t penalising anyone. It’s a reward. Go sick nothing’s taken away from you (which is what penalising means), don’t go sick you’re rewarded with a bonus on top of your earned money. It’s a windfall.

My grandma always taught me to only live off my standard pay. Dont expect bonus or overtime money. Its extra. Every Christmas bonus ive had has always has attendance as part of the bonus. In fact where I work now its target based but if you have so many days off through the year you lose it all

I really wish my last work had this
A lady I worked with (both started in April) is on her 19th day off sick. No idea how she hasn't been fired yet
I got fed up of having to stay late and cover her

Good advice.

A bonus is a bonus, ie. Extra, not standard.

Different people have different thresholds for when they would consider taking a sick day though. In the last few days on mumsnet there have been a few posts which demonstrate this.

One was a pregnant woman with a chesty cold who WFH. She was annoyed because her flexible working request had just been turned down, so was contemplating a sickie for her cold. She was open that this this was largely because she was sulking about her flexible working request and that she was well enough to work.

Yesterday someone was in a snit because a coworker had been gossiping about her when she had a weep in the loo at work. She was contemplating going on extended sick leave because of what she said was the lack of boundaries in her workplace.

Both threads were about 50/50 in terms of who was supportive and who thought they should just get on with things.

It wouldn’t be unreasonable in either of these situations for the bonus model to be deployed IMHO. But it’s a blunt tool and there are other circumstances where it would be very harsh.

We had something like this at a previous company except ours was a daily bonus of £20 - if you was off sick your £20 was shared amongst the people that worked (was only a team of about 6) as they'd had to pick up your workload. The staff where on a good wage at the time, the bonus made it a very good wage for the role! Before minimum wage but would have been about double min wage as a basic.

We had had a lot of staff 'poorly' on Fridays and Mondays - amazingly after this started they where ok ! We had about 80% attendance, with this we had 98%.

I highly doubt it would stand up in a tribunal if pregnancy or Equality Act conditions were the cause of absence.
Surprised at number of ppl who see no issue with this. It can be done legally but would have to be implemented carefully to avoid pregnancy and indirect disability discrimination claims.

Doesn't matter that it's a bonus, its still a potential to treat ppl differently because of protected characteristics.

And it doesn't matter that it's a bonus....see how women on maternity leave would would eligible for a bonus despite not being there (as to not be would be discrimination).

Just because it's not part of basic pay doesnt mean it can't be a discrimination risk. I work in HR and have seen this done but it needs to be carefully managed.

What about those with disabilities who have hospital appointments? My sons school attendance is about 80% but he has no unorthorised absences as it's all hospital appointments. Feels a bit mean in those circumstances when you can't help needing medical visits.

This could definitely be challenged as discriminatory by someone with disabilities, pregnant women etc, especially if attending hospital appointments leads to losing the bonus. Those who are off sick are already losing pay as OP says they don't get occupational sick pay so I don't see why they should lose out further. If that's not incentive to keep them in work, I doubt a small bonus will make much difference to attendance rates anyway.

I personally wouldn't work somewhere that did this. And I say that as someone who is rarely off sick, have been with current employer since 2016 and only absences have been covid related (so forced to isolate) - but I still think this is a ridiculous policy.

As I often to say to my DH just because you say something, doesn’t make it true. You can try to dress it up as an “incentive” all you want. It’s still penalising people who are sick. That will disproportionately affect disabled people so it’s indirect discrimination.

You sound like one of those employees who calls in sick regularly. Were you born after 2000 by chance?

If you start complaining they may take it away from.everyone...

Clearly you’ve never worked in HR. Sickness absence is a massive issue. Unnecessary amounts of absence loses a business money and loads excess work onto colleagues. Care must be taken for disability related absence (cancer diagnosis, to use an above example) but attendance bonuses have been around for decades and really do stop malingering. A but like paid sickness absence - remove pay and absence plummets. Sad truth, people swing the lead or wallow in minor ailments that really shouldn’t stop them working.

in my view, there are better ways to incentivise workers (create the right culture, promote work life balance, pay well, reward hard work etc etc), but these bonuses are legal when used properly and with advice and are often introduced to tackle crazy rates of unnecessary absence. And they work.

A bonus is a bonus! Not part of your salary.

I would hope not, because you wouldn’t take that day off sick. You would take it out of your annual leave entitlement, or if the company was nice, it would be compassionate leave.