Long-Term Sickness

For many businesses, managing long-term sickness can prove to be difficult. It adds strain on your business and can oftentimes create a financial burden. So, it’s crucial to support your employee’s return to work.

Failing to check in with sick employees, or having unfair long-term absence rules, can lead to mishandling situations. In the end, you could face unfair dismissal claims and tribunal hearings.

This guide will explain what long-term sickness is, what absence rights are, and how to manage sick leave.

What is long-term sickness?

Long-term sickness is a period of continuous absence from work of four weeks or more.

This type of absence can derive from many things, such as:

• An unexpected illness

• A persistent condition

• An accident at work

As an employer, you have a legal duty of care to safeguard employee wellbeing.

With long-term sick, keeping in touch is vital. This can help employees still feel like valuable members of the team. As well as provide them with support for managing their situation.

Both the employee and employer should stay in regular contact during the absence. They should both agree:

• How often the contact should be

• Whether the contact should be by email, phone or face-to-face

• Who the contact is with

Long-term sickness employment rights

All your employees have rights when it comes to being absent from work. To ensure you’re following the law, you need to assess whether your employee is able to return to work.

When managing poor health, there are two key legislations to bear in mind:

1. Anti-Discrimination Act 1977 (NSW), which prohibits discrimination based on various attributes;

2. and the Fair Work Act 2009, which covers general protections against adverse action.

Under the Disability Discrimination Act 1992, workplaces must provide workplace adjustments if requested. This will enable the employee to return to work and continue their role.

Long-term sick pay

Employee entitlements: 

• Full-time: 10 days of paid sick leave per year (pro-rata for part-time). 

• Part-time employees: Pro-rata entitlement based on their ordinary hours of work.

• Unused Leave: Carries over to the next year. 

• Evidence: May be required to support leave requests. 

• Casual employees: No right to paid sick and carer's leave, but can access up to two days of unpaid carer's leave per occasion.

• Unused leave: Unused sick and carer's leave can be carried over to the next year. 

How long can you be on long-term sickness?

An employee is no longer protected from being dismissed because of their absence (even if they provide evidence) if:

• their absence is more than 3 consecutive months or more than 3 months in total over the last 12 months, and

• they've used all their paid sick leave.

Managing long-term sickness

Through good management, you can reduce long term absence, support employees returning to work, and ensure fair treatment throughout.

Here is a step-by-step process to follow:

Hold an informal absence meeting

If your employee has been absent and has no plans to return, invite them to work for a meeting.

But be flexible, offer to have the meeting virtually or at their home, if they’re unable to travel.

During the meeting, you should:

• Be empathetic of their condition

• Understand how it’s impacted their work abilities

• Outline potential workplace adjustments

• Present a plan to help them return to work

Take notes during the meeting, as this stands as essential evidence if needed during future tribunals.

To gather further information, you should contact the employee’s doctor or GP. This will help you assess how long the absence could last. This can only be done via written consent.

Hold a formal absence meeting

If your employee remains absent, you should consider a second meeting.

This should follow the same format as your first meeting, but you will now have more information.

You can review any actions that have been taken following your first meeting.

Hold a final absence meeting

You should hold a final meeting if your employee is still off work and the medical information suggests they’re unable to return to work in the near future.

In this meeting, you may consider whether to terminate employment on health grounds. Before making any final decisions, you need to assess the medical report from their doctor or GP.

Manage sick leave and absences with HR software

Dealing with long term sickness can be tricky.

But if you have tried every option to help your employee return to work, you may need to consider dismissal. You should gather all the evidence from your employee’s health provider before ending an employee’s contract.

If not, you could face unfair dismissal claims and even tribunal hearings.

BrightHR software can help you manage long term sickness with our BrightAdvice helpline — our employment relations advisors are on hand 24/7. And for templates and guides to help you keep track of your employees and guide you through the various stages of the sick-leave process, our document library has you covered.

Plus, our staff absences and lateness tracker feature is a great way to keep record of who is working when and where. So you can log absences as soon as they occur.

Book a free demo today or give us a call on 1 300 029 198