Exits: How long can an employee be off work for one reason?
At Managing Medical, we look to help you with your problems, help you fix your people problems. We talk about disciplinaries, performance, and all of those intense issues, and for a lot of companies these are the hot issues that are hard to handle. But long-term incapacity is just if not more common, and while not as intense an issue, can be just as tricky.
What do you mean by ‘off work’?
The most common reason we have is illness, but there are lots of reasons why an employee might be off- you’ve probably got a longer list of ailments than I do. The list below has a lot of overlap, but you’ll get the gist:
-Ill or injured and unable to work at all. Cancer, broken bone, head injury and so and so forth. This does include a diagnosed mental health illness.
- A medical condition that makes their attendance unreliable. This could be someone undergoing treatment, or has a condition that has good days and bad days, periods of illness and treatment. This could be a mental health condition, crohn’s disease, gout, eczema and so forth. It is important that you have evidence of a medical diagnosis. Self-diagnosis is not sufficient.
-A loss of a necessity to work. Where the above are the loss of a physical capacity to work, there are other non-medical necessities on their part that they need to work, that can be lost. For example, the right to work (e.g. visa, or professional licence), or the means to work (e.g. car or drivers licence). It could even be geographical- the loss of a road or internet connection could separate the employee from their work.
It’s their fault not yours
Or to put a more delicate, nuanced perspective to it- it’s their side of the bargain that can’t be met. Employment is a contract, it’s your side of the deal to provide the work and the pay, their side to provide the labour.
It’s important to recognise- this is not your fault. It’s generally not the employer’s error/misfortune that got us here (unless for example, it was a workplace accident), the lapse of the contract is on the employee side.
But this isn’t a question of ‘their’ fault. Some situations can be traced to a bad decision by the employee (e.g. loss of licence), most can’t (e.g. cancer) and some might fall in between (e.g. a skiing accident by a 50 year old reliving past glories on a black diamond run). Put this question from your mind- you’re not a making any decision about fault. You have a situation, you’re sorting it out, rather than judging or punishing.
Stuff happens
What we are looking at is situation where a situation outside of work has rendered the employee unable to do to the job for a period of time.
For medical issues, it’s understandable that people lapse on the contract- human bodies are squishy and fallible, and employers should be sympathetic that they let us down from time to time. But while we should (and generally must) be patient and sympathetic to this, don’t lose sight of this fact; this isn’t happening to both of you (the employer and the employee) but to them, and you are being patient, and accommodating.
How much do you accommodate?
First you need to know how much you care. But it’s not a yes or no situation. The problem is that we think in yes/no, at fault/not at fault, care/don’t care. For medical issues, put that aside- no one with the organisation ‘doesn’t care’ but the question is how much care is too much.
Yes I felt your eyebrow raise. Let me explain. There are three dimensions in play;
-How much can your organisation care and accommodate*. Most organisations will take the approach of, we will do what we can, and take steps to move their work around, for the medium term, and generally this is the legal requirement. What is the s
-What is wrong with them/what has incapacitated them. Some cases are heartbreaking- cancer is the classic, but there’s a long list of ailments that could strike someone down, so I’m not going to list them. But there are other issues at the other end of the spectrum- jail time, loss of licence are at other end. Injuries resulting from lifestyle (e.g. amateur kickboxing) probably sit in the middle.
-How long? Are we talking weeks, months, or years?
*this could be divided into two subparts; what business is your organisation in, and what are their values. I personally don’t make this division, because I skeptically view all values statements as PR (see my PR as HR), but you might not be so skeptical, or you might have good reason to believe it’s not just window-dressing.
These three dimensions in combination, determine: how long you care, and when does that care start to run out.
So how long?
From the above question of care, tolerance and sympathy can vary, so there is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach, and certainly get legal advice if you think you might be taking a hardline. But here are some suggested timeframes:
-Until an opportunity for a remedy. Some problems can be fixed, and waiting until a ‘fix works’ can be appropriate, especially if the solution afterwards is unclear. Typically we are talking loss of access, car, license or visa, where a potential remedy is soon- their visa application is pending, they have applied for a work licence. Waiting until this, but not much longer after that solution has failed may be appropriate.
For example- an employee’s visa might have expired. If they are waiting to hear on an extension application, then waiting for the success of that application is appropriate.
-The length of the treatment. Some conditions have clear interventions, followed by clear recovery times. Think surgery- the employee has surgery in 2 months, followed by 1 month recovery and rehabilitation. Then you can fairly expect them back at work. If they don’t make it back, then that intervention may not have worked, in which case you are looking at another intervention, at which point you may be able to say-‘sorry we can’t wait another round’.
-Six months. This is a very rough rule of thumb, so don’t rely heavily upon this, but it’s always felt right to me when we don’t know when the employee will be off. A six-month review is a reasonable timeframe to most people minds that the employer is being considerate and lenient, but after which they need to take a solid look at the situation. But, the sooner you put this to the employee (we will give you six months) the more acceptance you get of that final decision.
