Phased return after sickness

[Knottingley]

A (f-t) colleague has had 6mths off sick on full pay (in line with policy)

She was due to go onto half-pay for a further 6 months from Monday but we have now had a "fit certificate" saying she is Ok to return on a phased basis, with much reduced hours for 3 months. 1 hour alternate days to begin with building up to a max of 5 hours per day over the 3 months.

I know what will happen with regard to her pay but I wonder what she's expecting. i.e I'm wondering how big an issue it's going to be when I tell her! What would you expect?

[FrontForward]

I work for the NHS and we use annual leave accrued during sickness absence to facilitate the phased return. It's in our HR policy.

Personally I think it's very unreasonable to expect an employer to pay forever for sickness absence...there has to be a cut off otherwise all business are at risk of going bust. Hard as that may sound. This phased return sounds totally unreasonable.

I agree that past poor performance should not be considered when deciding about employees return from sickness but I think OP was just declaring a personal view of having to welcome back a poor performing employee let alone on such generous terms. I'd feel the same way.

[Hotbot]

You don't always have to take o.h. Advice , it is a recommendation. By the times he makes a coffee and goes for a piss the hour will be over. Really ridiculous advice that you cannot possibly agree to.

[IDontDoIroning]

Thus sounds totally unreasonable. I work in a local authority and our policy on a phased return is that the employee will be back to full time hours within 4 weeks.
Longer than that and annual or unpaid leave has to be used to cover the hours not wirked.
The principal of a phased return should be to facilitate the return to the workplace - quite honestly if she can ku do ibd hour every other day I would challenge whether she us in fact ready in any way whatsoever to return to work and it really sounds to me like she doesn't want to go into half pay needs a few more months off and sees this as a solution.
From a business perspective I can't see how this would be reasonable

[SauvignonBlanche]

I'm sure our (NHS) policy is a phased return over 4 weeks.

[Gorja]

Personally I needed the slow return or I don't think I would have coped and I wouldn't be in full time work like I am now.

My occy health suggested a return over eight weeks initially but my managers extended it to twelve weeks as they wanted it to be as supportive as possible.

In the end due to being off for twelve months and then doing a phased return I had accrued more annual leave than I could fit in, so I ended up being paid for my annual leave.

I think this is an area where blanket policies can be difficult as different people need different things depending upon their circumstances. I was lucky to have very supportive managers who kept in touch throughout the twelve months and knew the ins and outs of my being off so long.

[fledtoscotland]

Our nhs policy is phased return over 4 weeks being paid at full pay

[flouncymcflouncerson]

Funny how all policies can be so different. I am NHS and have occ health soon to discuss a phased return. I know our policy requires using annual leave as a previous poster said to facilitate it. We are not able to do a phased return without annual leave however I assume if an employee had none available something would be worked out?

[flouncymcflouncerson]

In answer to your question OP I have no idea what I'd expect to be paid. It's a very odd scenario that I'm assuming doesn't have a precedent. My AL would be turned into hours and used accordingly so I'd be in full pay but couldn't and wouldn't have the leave available for such a long phasing in.