Anyone know if this sounds like something a company can do - Re: annual pay increase

[MaureenMLove]

I was trying to contact CAB, but the phone lines are only open between 1.45 and 3.35!

So, next best thing! Should probably considered you lot first tbh!!

Anyway. DH is due his annual pay review and he has been told today, that increases are dependant on sickness record throughout the previous year.

He had 10 days off, just last month, as he had very bad food poisoning, so according to his boss, his increase is in doubt!

Can they do this? Can they really consider my DH as not worthy, when one of his engineers seem to have a pattern forming of illnesses on Mondays or Fridays and therefore in the same situation.

This engineer should be penalised, but an illness, with doctors cert, it just doesn't sound right or fair!

Anyone have any ideas?

Ta

You could call acas, they give free advice and are very good.

I had to do Absence management and generally it was the number of occurrences of 'unauthorised absence' that counted, i.e. your DH would have only had 1 occurrence of sickness. Patterns such as Monday and Friday were one of the reasons the absence policy was brought in, so Monday and Friday guy should definitely get caught out.

It's wrong of the boss to make sugestions before the meeting though, he sounds like he is being a bit of an arse about it.

...oh, and at the time (a year or so ago) 3 occurrences of sickness were considered to be the 'norm' or within acceptable limits.

Many companies use the Bradford factor - days of sickness X incidences of sickness. Therefore a single absence of 10 days would be 10 (ie 10 X 1), wheras 10 individual days sickness (the Fridays / Mondays) would be (10 X 10) = 100.
The higher the number, the more concerning / questionable.

I would suggest your dP speak to HR and establish what criteria will be used to influence pay awards.... and if it is purely days absence, point out how unfair this is. Is he in a union by any chance?

How do you know the engineer won't be penalised. Where I wk it is done on number of days (more than 5 I think) or number of episodes (more than 3) in a given period ( rolling year). Doesn't result in a pay freeze, the public sector cuts have seen to that already!