Change in informal sickness policy

[Velmy]

Our contracts state no sick pay (outside of SSP). However, the company has always paid people their full salary when off sick. We've never asked for Drs notes. Very much a trust system.

Company is - to be honest - too lax on this and various other things, in part because until now there hasn't been anyone with the remit to manage an absence process.

A junior employee has recently been asked for a Drs note to cover an ongoing absence, for the purposes of SSP. This has come as quite a shock to said employee and will have a significant impact on their finances next month (they are currently on their 9th day of absence).

For clarity, this person had another extended period of absence earlier in the year (also completely legitimate). They were paid in full.

Employee has contacted me (not officially their boss but a 'senior' employee) asking if this is a 'policy change' (in which case they feel it should have been communicated) or if they're being singled out due to their previous absence, in which case they feel like they're being treated unfairly.

My question - legally, should this change in 'unofficial' policy have been communicated, or is the fact that contractually the company offers no sick pay enough to cover it?

To further muddy the waters, employee has (off their own back) been working from home while ill. Obviously not to full capacity, but covering urgent stuff and responding to emails. Could they claim that they have been WFH on that basis and therefore deserve at least partial payment?

I have advised them to contact our external HR service, but they are reluctant to do this in the first instance if it can be resolved internally.

I am defending myself from the overt LIES and deliberate misrepresentation the OP has made regarding my comments.

Pity you dont have the intellectual honesty to see that.

There is stated company policy - SSP.

A slightly different perspective, bearing in mind that the contracts state SSP - error. Because errors can run for very lengthy periods of time, especially if your company is small and has no "back office" function. I don't know whether it would fly, but given the scarcity of the detail, we don't know if any other argument would fly either. But I mention it because by arguing that the employer could equally argue for recovery of "overpayments" and everyone who has been off sick could be considered to owe them money.

Equally - and a good reason for staying out of this since you are not her manager - for someone whose first job this is, it is her issue to raise and resolve in the proper way, which is not contacting random people to question it. Because it may be quite legitimate for her to raise it, but it equally sounds like a small (admittedly laxley run) company that is rather good to work for. That raises other points, like how long she might be working for them in the longer term; whether rocking the boat now will mean that the comfort zone seriously changes; or even whether this will be the deathknell of you company and your jobs.

I am not arguing that she shouldn't raise it if that is what she wants to do. But that is her issue and her responsibility to do. Stay out of it would be my advice. You have told her that if she has an issue to take it up in the correct way. That was teh right answer.

I am defending myself from the overt LIES and deliberate misrepresentation the OP has made regarding my comments.
Pity you dont have the intellectual honesty to see that.

The OP has civilly explained why and under what circumstances she works when formally off on sick leave. She doesn't need to have the same opinion as you. You might do things differently, but there's no need for the aggression!

I think you are going over and above in trying to answer this. If the new person put the more robust process in place, they should be the one to answer when it is applied and have a written policy confirming this. Otherwise you could get it wrong and have personal consequences. The person off sick will just have to wait for the policy maker to return.

I suspect it’s along the lines of when employers are requiring people back to the office and it says in their contracts they are office based.

I also suspect the new person either had no idea what’s been happening or has been given instructions to apply the actual policy for financial reasons - quite a big difference paying people full pay vs SSP isn’t there.

I think they should have put out a memo though. I would stay out of it aside from having a quiet word with someone appropriately senior about clarifying the situation to all.

🙄

Pseudo civil or not, the OP deliberately took my words out of context and misrepresented what I posted.

Its all there for everyone to see. Instead of gunning for me, gun for the lying OP who cant handle a difference of opinion - she shouldnt have bothered posting here if she doesnt like the responses.

Our company has a similar set up. Officially sick pay isint paid to anyone but in practice most people with small levels of sickness are paid . Someone with the ops level of sickness would not be paid any more.

@PhilippaGeorgiou but for 20 years they’ve paid company sick pay. You can’t claim money back after 20 years, it’s not reasonable. Within a month or two, this was an accidental overpayment, sure. But not 20 years on. Further, anyone else can now reasonably expect that company sick pay IS the policy, and unless there is a change that has been promulgated, the person OP is referring to has grounds for it being unfair behaviour.

I didn't say they definitely could - I suggested that there are other ways of looking at things. Giving definitive answers - as some here are - without any real understanding of what is happening is foolish. Just as I don't know that getting "company sick pay" will bankrupt the company - and nobody else knows it won't. There is no legal certainty in terms of the circumstances of this specific case - for all we know (since the OP isn't her manager) she was warned that further sickness would result in SSP only. If there is custom and practice, that does not necessarily make it a contractual right, and policies can be changed without consultation.

It needs to be clear that they get SSP - that is what is in the contracts. Whatever else has happened, there is no "company sick pay" - there is only evidence that people have been given full pay for a long time, for reasons we can only speculate.

And you can claim up to 6 years in England and Wales - that could be a lot of sick pay.

Anyway, my advice wasn't that any of these things are definitely true, any more than anything else anyone else says is definitely true. My advice was that the OP has given the correct answer - it is not her business, she is not the manager, there is a process and the person should follow it. What it seems to me is that the person involved wants someone else to fight her battle. If that is the case she should have joined a union; and if she has, she needs to go to her union.

Money companies have been hit hard by the increase in minimum wage and employers contribution to national insurance. Therefore they are having to look at areas that were discretionary and realign them to help the company survive by meeting statutory obligations according to the contracts.
Just email thanks to Rachel reeves

I agree your assessment that it’s not hers to answer is the right assessment. However it’s a clear issue that needs to be flagged for the great and the good at the top of the food chain.

I agree that speculating about the company going bust or whatever is nonsense speculation. I agree that things could also be read differently, but I think that such a reading is unlikely without other information from OP.

I've enjoyed reading all the responses except yours, but you'll notice throughout the thread that yours are the only ones with a rude, ranty tone, writing in CAPS and chucking insults around. Which I suspect is why MN have deleted your post.

As others have pointed out, you're the only one acting this way. You don't have to be here if it's winding you up so much.

Just email thanks to Rachel reeves

Don't forget to thank a decades worth of Tories as well. Not supporting Labour, but they inherited a mess and are probably making it into more of a mess, but the Tories would not have made it any better.

I agree your assessment that it’s not hers to answer is the right assessment. However it’s a clear issue that needs to be flagged for the great and the good at the top of the food chain.

I'm historically very much a "Not my circus, not my monkeys" kind of person with stuff like this. However there's a significant age split in this office, with a bunch of early 20s, straight out of uni types who don't really know their rights/when to advocate for themselves, and because they feel so lucky to be here, they won't always speak up.

I'm early 40s, the only person in the office with (admittedly basic) HR/employment law knowledge and a senior figure in the company/industry. While I'm not in a management role here, I dictate a lot of what we do and due to the general lack of heirachy, people do tend to lean on me in the absence of HR/management in the office.

It's not ideal but the new office manager is basically a conduit to the overall boss (based overseas), so they're formally taking that burden thankfully!

I agree that speculating about the company going bust or whatever is nonsense speculation. I agree that things could also be read differently, but I think that such a reading is unlikely without other information from OP.

Certainly not going bust, but there's been a lot of unnecessary/excess spending over the years due to a lack of structure/oversight, and as the company gets bigger we need to get a handle on it.

I’ve worked for businesses with a trust system too which can be revoked if you take the piss. We were allowed duvet days for (five a year) that didn’t effect your attendance so if you woke up with a stonking hangover / cold you could call in and stay in bed. I think two lengthy absences within a short period has triggered alarm bells.

Any additional payment over SSP was made at discretion of the big boss. It was the same with other kinds of leave so they carried on paying during “unpaid leave” such as parental or time off due to sick relatives or paid time off for funerals etc. There was no automatic right to it though.

I suspect your colleague will be told the same by external hr company.

Bit of an update - company's official position is that the current 'manage your own absence' system has got out of hand, people taking too many days 'off sick' just to work from home etc.

We're not hybrid and our work involves a lot of team and individual travel, so they're really strict on us being in the office together when we're back at base.

Company spending way too much on sick pay with no real tracking/management of process. This could potentially come back to bite us if we're not offering support to people with ongoing health issues, and is open to abuse. We're looking to double the workforce by the end of the year so we need a proper system in place.

New office manager was told to sort this and simply went by our contracts without communicating this. I've raised the Custom & Practice issue with him, he's going to book a day with our external HR provider to discuss this and get an official company handbook compiled and approved, that can be rolled out to all staff.

Company is apparently happy to financially support people with company sick pay on a discretionary basis if they're too ill to work for longer periods, but wants the SSP system to be the default if people are taking a day here and there.

I think this is fair, as long as everyone is on the same page.

Ah, duvet days! We had these at a previous job...only two a year though, not quite as generous as yours!

I remember the first time I called in to use one (hangover), I'd never felt like such a blagger 😅

There was an official don’t ask, don’t tell policy. So all you had to say was I’m having a duvet day and that was it. I thought they were a brilliant idea. As a parent it’d definitely be used to cover the my child barfed in the night and can’t go to school emergency. In my 20s though it was very much for terrible hangovers!

The companies I worked for paid full or half pay for sickness. BUT this included the amount of SSP, which they reclaimed from the government. They needed sick/FiT notes to do so.

I can’t Google because mumsnet always locks up my device, but some combination of HMRC, SSP, employer claim should give full details.

If your colleague has just been asked for a sick note for SSP, you may well be panicing over nothing and would be unwise to draw attention to the exact terms of your contract.

Custom and practice is relevant here, and your employer is leaving itself open to legal challenges, regardless of what it might say n the contracts.

I inherited a very similar set-up in my current role and was advised that we needed to go through a formal consultation with staff before changing our approach.

BUT this included the amount of SSP, which they reclaimed from the government.

With the exception of a temporary scheme during Covid locakdowns, reclaiming hasn't been possible since 2014. Employers pay the full amount of SSP themselves.

This is what I suspected... company has booked a day with our external HR service to discuss.

Well formal consultation is a nice thing to have to not upset your staff when that happens, but the very minimum is that company policy must be promulgated and it must be clearly established that everyone knows what the policy is, understands it, and it's applied in a consistent and fair manner.

I love the word promulgated.

I believe the plan is to get a handbook together, physical or digital, have a presentation where the HR company will send someone to go through it, then have everyone sign something to say they've read, understood and accept the contents.