Threat of redundancy - concern about sickness record

[blondieminx]

I've worked for a company for nearly 7 years, and always get great feedback in appraisals. Last year I had quite a lot of time off sick with 2 recurring conditions. In the later part of the year I was called to HR for several "catch up" sessions about my absence, and was then threatened with a disciplinary hearing next time I was off sick (even if the sick leave was certified by my GP, which is clearly ridiculous if not illegal!).

I was sent to occupational health who thankfully wrote a nice letter to the company saying that actually I wasn't malingering, and they had better tread carefully.

The company has now announced it will be making redundancies but has not said what the criteria for these will be but I am worried that sickness records will come into it, and am wondering how best to handle this? I would be very grateful for any tips, thanks everyone.

Hello

Sickness records are usually used in redundancy situations. In your case it depends how the Company will use them, and what time period they will use as a framework (eg will it be the past year, or the past two years, or whatever). They may well use something called the Bradford factor which is a mathematical calculation. Its not illegal to discipline anyone for their sickness record (its common in most companies) providing the Company have this written down in their policies or handbook. In your case if the condition was 'underlying' or 'reoccuring' then the Company may look at it in a better light. Wait until the Company set out their criteria. You have a good length of service and hopefully the Company will also use more subjective measures such as your performance, capability etc which should help you. I hope this helps,

If the recurring condition is serious enough (long term, affects day to day activities - or would do if you didn't have treatment) then you might count as having a disability for discrimination purposes. In that case the company would need to be careful not to discriminate against you because of that condition. They might be ok if a non-disabled person with the same absence record would be treated the same, but I think companies are often careful not to put too much weight on sickness absence in redundancy scoring because it can back fire on them.

Good luck, hopefully all the other factors will outweigh this.

Attendance record is often and legitimately used when making selections for redundancy, but should always be combined with performance, skills and disciplinary record information, so if you're good in those areas, that will sigificantly improve your chances.

For the record, disciplinary or pre-disciplinary action with regard to attendance issue is very common and also perfectly legitimate, it's not about whether you were malingering or not, if they are following their policy, unless it's a disability issue, there is no need for them to 'tread carefully'.

The company will have to specify what the criteria are, and if there is consultation going on because there are several redundancies planned, consultation with regard to what these criteria actually are ought to be included in the discussions.

Thanks for all your responses ladies, it's much appreciated

I will keep my fingers crossed that the other factors outweigh the past sickness record and I keep my job.

I wish our place would think about offering a shorter working week (which would actually be quite nice and probably help with one of the 2 conditions I have!) instead of redundancies but hey ho...

blondie there should be some sort of consultation so making suggestions like shorter weeks for people would be something employees/employee representatives could do. Even if they don't want to consider it as a wider thing they may consider it for individuals who are interested if it helps lose less people overall.