Sickness and Absence Policy Template

This Sickness and Absence Policy has been updated to include a more detailed notification procedure for employees to let their employers know that they are sick, and a more detailed return to work procedure.

This Sickness and Absence Policy sets out clearly how you will deal with staff sick leave and other absences. A proper Sickness and Absence Policy will help demonstrate to employees that you take sickness and absence seriously and will treat it fairly.

This Sickness and Absence Policy contains a section on the monitoring of employee sickness. To comply with Data Protection Legislation the employer must have the consent of the employee to keep records of their sickness and reasons for the sickness. This consent is normally covered in each employee’s terms and conditions of employment, if this is not the case the employer should use a separate consent form. A simple consent form is available under the related documents link below.

The Sickness and Absence Policy includes the 'fit note' requirements, effective from 6 April 2010. This allows doctors to advise that employees are either 'unfit for work', or 'may be fit for work' with suitable support from the employer.

A Sickness and Absence Policy will often help to increase or safeguard productivity and staff morale, as staff know that they will be supported when they are absent through illness, and that other employees will not be allowed to abuse the policy by taking a sick day when they are not actually ill. This Sickness Policy includes requirements on self-certification and return to work interviews. Self-certificates and Return to Work forms are available from the list of related documents below.

This Sickness and Absence Policy makes provision for the Company to monitor and record both the amount of absences and the reasons for them. Not only does this help with planning future cover for staff absence and with differentiating between different types of absence appropriately, it will deter abuse of the system as employees know that they must account for their absence.

This Sickness and Absence Policy includes the following sections:
1. Aim of the Policy
2. Sickness
3. Long-Term and Persistent Absence
4. Return to Work Interviews
5. Other Absence
6. Monitoring

This Sickness and Absence Policy is in open format. Either enter the requisite details in the highlighted fields or adjust the wording to suit your purposes.

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