RE: Flexible working and recording sickness absence - Feedback - Community Feedback

3 RE: Flexible working and recording sickness absence

31 May, 2019 09:09

Hello Community

I feel this should be easy to work out but for some reason I can't seem to rationalise this procedure. What should be the process for recording absence when reported but the employee completes the contracted hours?

We recently changed contracts so that people can flex their hours across the week. They are contracted to hours not days and can work whatever combination suits the requirements of the role. So it may be that one week they work all their hours in 3 days and others across the whole week.

My confusion to myself is how sickness absence should be recorded, when an employee can flex their hours so no working time is lost but they are certificated as unfit for work.

I have had two incidents recently whereby an employee recorded themselves as sick but worked the contracted hours around the absence. One had a fit note and worked it so that they completed their contracted hours the week the fit note ended. The other simply worked different days (they reported sick as they were due to be at meetings for the two days they fell ill and so need to explain why they could not attend work.

I have set up a spreadsheet to enable me to record the actual hours lost. I have asked Managers for their input.

I fully understand that flexible working can reduce absenteeism. So have no issue with changing work hours around. My concern is about recording and reflecting correctly, non work days (rest days) and sickness absence.

I will admit to feeling a tad embarrassed posting this, but in the end I was not satisfying myself that I was doing things correctly.

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Keith | 0 Posts

31 May, 2019 09:16

If in a week they complete their contracted hours then to my mind they were never absent so no absence should be recorded. So you may need to record absence weekly rather than daily.

(Its actually how many senior managers work)

The issue is of course around how you monitor and track any health issues and there is no easy answer.

If they complete their hours in a different week then I think its slightly more problematic but I think the same principle may apply and its a consequence of new more flexible ways of working coming up against thinking from a M-F 9-5 way of thinking.
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Sara-Jane | 0 Posts

31 May, 2019 09:53

In reply to Keith:
Hello Keith

I think this is where I am struggling. The need to balance supporting someone's health with their ability to flex their hours.

Maybe the absence should be recorded at the point of return and agreed as to time taken and then recorded by the LM which is then shared with me for monitoring and payroll purposes.

We use BreatheHR, which I really like. I have asked them if it is possible to enable absence recording to be made the same as we can record other forms of leave, the work pattern can be ignored so that the actual period and amount of working time lost can be recorded correctly. They could then upload any fit notes record the dates but reflect no working time was lost and then in the notes section advise what they did.
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Elizabeth Divver | 0 Posts

31 May, 2019 18:25

I agree with Keith. If someone works their hours, there is no absence. It's like being ill at the weekend - the person is ill on a non-working day so you don't need any documentation.You don't record the sickness of full-time staff that occurs at weekends. You only need to start tracking patterns of illness if it affects people working their hours.

In the case of someone being absent on days when they should have been at meetings and where an absence is recorded, then I suppose that the additional hours they work to make up the difference could go through the payroll as overtime and would then cancel out the hours stopped because of absence. If the person is off long enough to get SSP or if you have OSP, then they could end up making more than their usual salary unless you introduce some sort of control on this such as manager approval before the hours are worked - or perhaps that is less important than getting the work done?
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