Annual Sick Day "Allowances"

[expatmama]

Good morning, can anyone please advise how many sick days a year would constitute a poor attendance record as per an "average" HR policy?

Thanks very much in advance.

I think it's more the number of absences rather that "sick days",so somone could have one period of absence that is 20 days long and not be disciplined after investigation, but someone who had several seperate instances may be. It also depends on the pattern, illnesses and length of service. Some companies state when taking new staff on that a certain number of absences within a trial period will result in action.

Meant to say, in my old company we routinely investigated after 3 periods of absence in a 12 month period. My DH's company is the the same at the moment.

Are you having problems with your own employer expatmama?

How employers measure absence and how they determine whether an attendance record is poor/in need of action depends on the individual employer so you need to look at your own company policy.

There are different ways of measuring it. Many don't have a number of days or absences specified so they can be flexible about when to introduce absence management measures. Many others have specifics relating to number of days or number of absences.

Personally I prefer to mange absence on a flexible basis, looking at the individual's record more generally and the reasons for the absences, some are obviously more valid than others.

Can you tell us what the problem is?

Thank you so much for the rapid response! I am enquiring on behalf of a family member ? in the last 12 months they have had:

• 2 individual days off (which unfortunately happened to be either a Monday or a Friday)
• 1 afternoon off for a medical appointment (which should or should not be considered as absence due to sickness?)
• left 2 hours early one afternoon (again a Friday I think) due to sickness

So, based on a 3 absences in any 12 month period policy I can now see that it would be flagged for investigation, but it just seemed rather excessive to me that this is being considered as a poor attendance record?

I personally wouldn't consider that number of days in a year to be particularly excessive, but if often depends on number of absences and for me at least it would be based on the circumstances.

The medical appointment, presumably this was agreed with the line manager beforehand? If considering this as 'sickness absence' would present a problem, could it not have been taken out of holiday entitlement? It doesn't matter either way but I would have said if the company has a very stringent absence policy that includes investigation after this amount of time off, the line manager should have said it might be better taking that as holiday, so that's an argument worth making.

Otherwise it's not that unusual.

It may also be that 3 absences in a 12 month priod automatically triggers an investigation - but that the result of the investigation is that the absence is not unreasonable.

Agree nervousal. Sometimes it automatically triggers a warning but often it just triggers an investigation to make sure they're on top of things and to prevent small absences from turning into absence problems. So that's no bad thing and if after investigating they're happy there isn't a problem as such, all will be well.

The medical appointment was agreed beforehand with the line manager and was at an out of county hospital which is why it required the half day.

Forgot to say that so far the outcome of the investigation is to be put on a 12 week observation period. It just seems very excessive to me and am wondering if there is some ulterior motive behind it (the person in question is female and over 60). We will see what happens over the coming months.

Thanks again for all your help.

Mine would trigger after 11 days in 12 months, not the number of separate occasions. But what it triggers is for HR to speak to your line manager to discuss whether it needs to be looked at - and if the line manager is happy that it isn't a sign of problems, then nothing happens.

Also, medical appointments wouldn't count as sick absence, though we are encouraged to make them at the start or end of the day if possible to reduce the impact.