Sickness Absence

Unplanned absence can be very disruptive and costly to the business, whether it is sporatic single day absences or longer term absences with complex medical issues.

Effective management of these absences can allow you to minimise the impact by, reducing absence levels, alleviating the stress levels of other staff who are required to cover the absences and protect your business against claims such as disability discrimination.

We can assist you by:-

• Advising you on absence management techniques and reviews
• How to conduct absence reviews and identify absence trends
• How to deal with long term absences and the complexities of employees who are protected under the Disability Discrimination Act.
• Advice and guidance on requesting medical information and reports from Occupational Health Specialists or GP’s and the guidance around seeking consent.
• How to consider reasonable adjustments to the employees role.
• Ultimately how to dismiss an employee due to their illness and capabilities.

Family Friendly Absences

Family friendly and flexible working rights are continually changing to encourage more of a work life balance for employees and working parents.

Recently we have seen changes in the rights to request flexible working, shared parental leave, time off for partners to attend ante-natal appointments etc and this is expected to be an ever evolving piece of legislation over the next number of years.

We can provide advice to include the following:-

• Maternity Leave
• Paternity Leave
• Adoption Rights
• Shared Parental Leave
• Flexible Working Requests
• Dependents Leave
• Unpaid Parental Leave