Company sick pay entitlement

[Donkeydoodles]

Hi,

My company has a 6 week company sick leave policy. After company sick pay runs out, statutory pay kicks in for up to 26 weeks.

A colleague took their first day of sick leave on 1st Feb 2019 and will have used up the full amount of company sick pay shortly.

If they decide to stay off sick and just take statutory pay, what happens on 1st Feb 2020, does the company pay kick back in? i.e. are they eligible for another 6 weeks at full pay?

Thanks!

Depends if it resets each year or is done on a rolling 12 month period

It totally on what is written in the company sick pay policy.

Ours is so many weeks in a rolling 3 year period to discourage such behaviour.

Most companies use a rolling year, in my experience. The company policy will say how they calculate it.

As PP have said, it depends on the policy but a rolling period of 12 months is usual (that means that if someone is off sick they would look at the previous 12 months from that date).

It's done on a rolling 12 month period but I don't really understand what that means. I had assumed that meant it was reset 12 months after the first day or sickness

It's usually for a 12 month period, but unless public sector, it's unlikely it'll kick back in for a continuing period of absence.

Rolling 12 month period means that they deduct any absences in the 12 months prior to the first day of the current absence.

Say for instance you had 2 weeks off in Feb, Two weeks off in June and Two weeks off in Nov. If you then went on to have another absence the following May, you’d have two weeks of company sick pay left as you’d already have used 4 weeks CSP in the preceding 12 months... does that make sense? To get back to up full entitlement you need a clear 12 months with no absences before a further absence.

As an aside... someone with that level of absence would also trigger the sickness absence policy and possibly be taken out of the company sick pay scheme depending on previous years history and the reasons for absence. CSP is a benefit not a right and many businesses now are cracking down on its abuse as many people see it as an extension of their annual leave.

My job entails these sorts of calculations and IME I would say that the company pay is not reset unless the employee has returned to work for a set period of time.

It's usually a rolling 12 month period so if someone had been on continuous sick leave since Feb 19 they would not then be due another 6 weeks sick pay in Feb 20 unless they returned to work for eg 4 weeks and then went off sick again.

Rolling 12 months means that if you have a period of sickness then they look at the sickness absence over the previous 12 months to see whether they can pay company sick pay e.g sickness in february 2019, they will check absences from February 2018 onwards. If you then had an absence in may 2019 then they would check back to may 2018 onwards. It would only reset if you had a year with no sickness absence

Ahh thanks for the clarification. My tiny brain seems to be struggling with this today!

Ah @dementedpixie said it better than me :)