The Employment Rights Bill will mean employees and workers are entitled to Statutory Sick Pay (SSP) from day one. The lower earnings limit for SSP will also be removed.
Currently, when an employee/worker is off sick they are only entitled to SSP from day four of their absence and have to earn £123 a week or more to qualify. Both of these requirements will be removed – meaning they’ll be entitled to SSP from day one of their sickness.
The rationale is to reduce the number of people working when not fully fit (estimated to cost UK businesses around £25 billion a year) and in turn, reduce the overall rate of sickness absence, increase productivity, and protect the health service.
But will this mean a spike in absence rates? My view is that it will. Proactive absence management will be even more important – ensuring you support those with genuine sickness and encourage reluctant returners to venture back into work. Here are a few things to have on your agenda:
Make it easy for managers – we believe it’s important to help managers frame discussions with their team consistently and with the right language. That’s why we call our return to work meetings ‘welcome back discussions’. Still legally and commercially robust, they are an accessible form of meeting to check in with returning individuals that they’re OK, whether they need support and whether there are any underlying issues – on every sickness occasion.
Update your documents – employment contracts or policies referencing the current SSP regime will need updating to reflect the changes (when we know when they kick in). We’ll update all the relevant documents on our Intelligent Employment platform. If you like the idea of the ‘welcome back discussion’ you’ll need to make that change too.
Manager training – managers need confidence, consistency and clarity to proactively manage absence. How do they track absence, deal with short-term illness and support those with challenging long-term conditions? Support with simple structured training to ensure they have all of the skills and tools they need – click here to find out about ours.
There is an ongoing consultation on the changes to SSP which closes on 04 December – you can have your say here.
Get in touch to find out how our Intelligent Employment service can support you with advice and documents to proactively manage absence. Any questions on the change, please don’t hesitate to drop me a line here (or chat with your Halborns’ key lawyer).
