A member of my staff has apparently been diagnosed with a very serious illness. I only know this because a colleague told me, who "thought I should know", but the affect member of staff doesn't know that I know. Now the affected member of staff has phoned in sick a few times, not citing this as the reason. Each time we have to pay £200 a day for cover.
I am concerned that
(a) we have a duty of care towards him and might need to offer him more support/ risk assessment
(b) unfortunately budgets are really tight and it would be really helpful to know if we need to factor in more emergency cover regularly on a longterm basis
Equally I realise it is his business and I suspect there is no legal obigation to declare major health problems?
On a human level, it is very hard to know a member of the team is going through something like this, but not to be able to ask how they are.
Any advice? Thanks