Disiplinary after Sick Note Sickness

[TedMosby]

Does anyone know that if you are off work with Sick Notes from your Doctor that when you return to work you can be disiplined for the sickness, especially for being off sick with Stress from work?

[Kymmy]

It was recently talked about in THIS THREAD (http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/22/33616001-employment-law-sick-lines.html) is that the same as what you mean???

[Mick]

Does anyone know that if you are off work with Sick Notes from your Doctor that when you return to work you can be disiplined for the sickness, especially for being off sick with Stress from work?

Any sickness which is outside that of a DDA (Disability Discrimination Act) reason, is at risk to some form of Absence Management policy. It's not necessarily a 'Disciplinary' that employees face upon return to work, more of a process to try and control the amount of absence(s) any employees may be having.

For instance quite a few firms I know of are now introducing the 'Bradford Factor' policy, this arrangement monitors absences of employees and assigns points to employees who have a number of absences. A threshold is then assigned, such as if an employee exceeds X amount of points in a year, they go through of a series of stages, the first being a verbal warning and the last stage having employment terminated. Again though the DDA comes into it and the employer can't dismiss someone unfairly.

[Raistlin]

The Civil Service (as one example) operate exactly the polcy that Mick is describing above.

This 'rolling' threshold of sickness is irrespective of whether or not you have a Doctor's certificate. For example, if a Member of the Civil Service were to break a leg requiring several weeks in traction they would most likely be the subject of a review upon their return as they had broken the threshold for sick days.

Management have the facility, should the circumstances dictate (and I woud imagine that in the above scenario they would) to 'discount' individual periods of sickness within the 12 month period - effectively allowing for a sensible management decision as to whether or not any form of disciplinary action is required, rather than just trusting blindly to the system.

I guess then that the short answer is that Employers can (apart from in the circumstances Mick details) subject a member of staff to their disciplinary procedures if they feel that it is warranted following a period of sick leave - irrespective of whether or not they have a doctor's certificate.

[Vlad_Dracul]

Do you mean disciplinary action or a simple sickness monitoring/return to work interview? The two are not really the same.

In any case,you will have a contract of employment which roughly states you turn up for work,carry out your specified duties>get paid. Dont turn up often enough or long ewnough>breach of contract> disciplined>maybe dismissed.