Employee lying about being sick in order to have a paid day off

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Advice please. It has come to light that an employee has lied about being sick one day, filled in a self certification form in order to be paid as we operate a discretionary sickness scheme and has been paid. I have now been told by a mutual acquaintance that they were in fact on an activity day with them which had been planned for a few weeks. The acquaintance did not realise that they had taken a sick day and nor did I tell them. The employee has no holiday left and has flexitime they still have to repay.

This should be disciplined but at what level?

Are you the persons line manager? Do you have a HR team? Do you have evidence of the fact they attended this day other than the say so of your mutual acquaintance?

Disciplinary sanctions should be consistent with how things are usually done at your org so HR will be able to advise on what’s appropriate IF the investigation and disciplinary hearing finds in favour of misconduct- don’t preempt that or you’ll be in hot water if they appeal.

No I am not their line manager, I am above that, above me is the MD. We don't have an HR team. There is no other evidence other than the mutual acquaintance telling me how they spent the day with them. It's very recent.

We also have not had this type of problem before.

What does your policy say in terms of how you manage conduct issues? The persons line manager should conduct an investigation in line with this (not you as you’ll be the person they can appeal to). If they find that there’s a disciplinary case to answer then a hearing usually follows where a sanction is given- per the policy. They will need to be given the chance to defend the accusation- so you’ll need to make clear what the accusation is and how it came to light.

How long has the employee been with you? If less than two years then it’ll be easier to essentially just say things aren’t working out if you would prefer not to employ them any longer.

If they have been with you longer than 2 years get some professional HR advice if you want to take disciplinary action
If you think employing an expert is expensive not doing so can be even more costly.

I would let it go as it's already been paid and send a general email TO EVERYONE regarding sickness having to be genuine and that it's at the companies discretion to pay. Next sickness don't pay. It's one of those things. Sad to know your employee lied.

Or you have a meeting and say you have reason to believe they weren't sick on X day and run an correction on their next pay slip to decide a days wages. It would be interesting to see if they come clean.

*deduct

Aquaintence sounds like a troublemaker and should be treated with the contempt they deserve.

What are they signed off with? Maybe they're really ill but needed a day out.

Ask them before you jump to conclusions.

Things like this is why people roll their eyes when businesses complain

It's one day
In fact it's possibly one day
As you have no actually evidence other than tittle tattle

You want to punish your employee for that?
Seriously?

If someone has lied to their employer to get paid time off then that’s pretty serious actually, @purpleframes. It’s not about one day off, it’s about their honesty and trustworthiness.

Assuming they have over 2 years’ service and you’d have to go through your full disciplinary policy, and you could establish the allegations were founded, I’d be inclined to look at it as gross misconduct with a view to dismissing them. Or if I was feeling lenient a final written warning.

Aquaintence sounds like a troublemaker and should be treated with the contempt they deserve

That’s quite a leap. None of that is at all evident in the OP’s post.

Maybe they are a troublemaker of course, but they could equally have innocently said “oh I was chatting to xxx last week on a flower arranging course” - OP says they knew nothing of the fact employee had called in sick.

I wouldn't let this go, it's fundamentally dishonest - sick days are not for going on activity days (signed off on long term sick is different and of course people are still allowed to leave the house, but OP says in her post that this was a one-off day on a self-cert not a long term sick signed off by GP!). Presumably either the work they were meant to be doing that day didn't get done at all or colleagues had to cover so the person could go off on a jolly, this just isn't on. Misuse of paid leave is actually counted as fraud (not saying a one off is to a criminal level, but extensive or repeated incidents can be classed as gross misconduct).

You do need to do a proper investigation, get the facts sorted and make sure you follow a fair process (ACAS has useful guides on their website) but in my company this would likely result in some kind of formal written warning, so that if it ever happened again we would probably dismiss the person. Although if there were mitigating circumstances and/or the person came clean and was profusely apologetic we might possibly agree to retrospectively swap the day to annual leave or unpaid leave if we were sure it was never going to happen again...

Have a look at your disciplinary policy. A lot will say things like dishonesty and falsifying records will be gross misconduct

Exactly @maxelly. I think if the conduct was established and dishonesty/falsifying records was something the company treated as gross misconduct according to their disciplinary policy, then following the application of a fair process it would likely be in the band of reasonable responses to dismiss or issue a high level warning. Entirely different if someone is signed off by a doctor.

Some of the responses on here are clearly from the CF who do this sort of thing.

Personally if the conduct is usually ok I would just have a meeting and discuss what you have found out and explain they it is not on and if you hear of anything similar happening again you will take it further.

Where I work this is specified as an example of gross misconduct in the staff guidance. I suppose because it would cause a breakdown in trust between employer and employee. Not to say it doesn't happen though.

If this employee is usually a good hardworking employee and this is a one off I'd let it go and send a generic email regarding the sickness policy ect.
Although it does sound like this was pre planned Sickness is not always physical and can be due to mental health and going out and doing an activity may help with that.

Tasha, I am 100% supportive of my staff on long-term sick leave (either with mental or physical illness) keeping busy, doing their hobbies, seeing family and friends etc., it is a really important part of recovery. I def don't expect them to sit in the house all day. I am also supportive of anyone that feels they need the odd day at home unexpectedly if they suddenly feel overwhelmed/anxious/stressed and unable to come to work, to me that is just as much 'sickness' as a cold or a stomach bug or whatever. A quiet day reflecting/relaxing/doing some mindfulness can stop that sort of thing spiralling into a full on mental health crisis.

But what I am 100% not OK with is someone 'pulling a sickie' because they'd rather do something else than come to work that day, that is what annual leave/unpaid leave/the weekend is for! I very rarely say no to a request for leave even on a short notice basis so there's no excuse really, so I would be really peeved if this was one of my staff or one of my colleagues and would want some kind of action taken...

Regardless of whether you end up disciplining the employee you do need to sort out having someone in your organisation responsible for HR or using an external HR company so you deal with things like this properly.

I've come across this a few times through out my career and while you can give the person a warning, if you have nothing to back up your claims then if especially if they have any protected characteristics you can end up facing expensive claims later down the line.

Or to put it correctly they’ve stolen a days pay.
If you’re not sick and you lie to get paid you’re a thief, pure and simple.

You need to work with your Disciplinary policy. There must surely be adequate provision for when someone "pulls a sickie" which is absolutely the definition of this.

If this is a first offence, then it could reasonably be a first informal warning, but it entirely depends what your company policy is. General comment: If you don't have a company policy then it's unfair to employees not to give them clear guidance and boundaries on expected behaviour.

I have now been told by a mutual acquaintance that they were in fact on an activity day with them which had been planned for a few weeks. The acquaintance did not realise that they had taken a sick day and nor did I tell them

The acquaintance had no idea that the employee had booked the day as sickness, so I don't know how people on here can vilify the person for mentioning they were on the same event! The person in the wrong is the person taking non-legit sick leave.

I'm always amazed at how trivial some posters see 'pulling a sickie' is. It's really serious and anyone with an ounce of a conscience wouldn't do it. I've never done it in my whole life! (I didn't ever skip school either 😇)

Anyway OP, I'd get outside professional advice too. Even if yiu end uo choosing not to do anything it might help to knoe what you woulf do in future - and lets face it, it is more likely to happen again if you end up letting the employee get away with it.

Personally if the conduct is usually ok I would just have a meeting and discuss what you have found out and explain they it is not on and if you hear of anything similar happening again you will take it further.

This seems like a reasonable way to deal with them if they are otherwise a good employee.

But how does that play in terms of fairness if another employee were to do the same? It might need to be formalised for that reason.

Please don’t send a generic email out to everyone about the sickness policy. It achieves fuck all - the person it’s aimed out won’t care, and it will just piss off the people who are complying that they are getting lumped in to the cheeky fucker.

If nothing else, use this as a wake up call that you need to overhaul your disciplinary policy; as usually this sort of thing would be covered in there.

I would call them into a private meeting.
How you proceed depends on how much you value them as an employee.
You tell them it has been brought to your attention that they attended an event. That the person was not telling tales and has no idea that they were not on a days holiday.
Tell them they can take the day as unpaid holiday and you will dock their pay next week, or they can work unpaid for an extra day.
If you don't like them, I think you give them a written warning and still dock their pay.

Wow! Thank you everyone. Lots of viewpoints.

The MD is away on a week's holiday at the moment. When he comes back, I shall have an informal meeting with him. He is not someone who comes down hard on his staff. I will recommend to him that I speak to the person in question considering it is a mutual acquaintance of ours and tell him what I have been told and give him an opportunity to admit to it or deny it. If he admits to it, then that day's sick pay will be deducted from his pay and that a day's flexitime will have to be paid back before the end of the year. If he denies it, then as others have said, it's one persons word against another BUT I still think the employee would think twice about doing it again. I do believe the acquaintance, they do not have an axe to grind, they were just being generally chatting telling me all about their day out.