Sickness Issues and SSP

7. Sickness and Discipline

All your employees share an interest in seeing that the few who try to exploit the sickness provisions are brought into line.

7.1 Spell out, in your disciplinary procedure, the consequences of wilful absenteeism.

• Any procedure must be seen to be fair, objective and consistently applied.
• If you discover that an absentee has not been genuinely ill, you will probably wish to activate your formal disciplinary procedure.
• This could eventually lead to sanctions (eg loss of benefits), or even to dismissal. If you dismiss, you may have to be able to satisfy an employment tribunal that the dismissal was fair (see 9).

7.2 You can withhold SSP if you reasonably suspect an employee is not ill.

7.3 If you want to stop paying SSP to an employee after four or more absences in a year, seek an adjudication from HM Revenue & Customs Medical Services.

• Write to your local HM Revenue & Customs office enclosing the employee's written permission for Medical Services to become involved and any medical certificates he or she has supplied.
• If the employee refuses to give permission, this may be grounds to stop SSP.
• Medical Services will get a report from an employee's GP, and may conduct its own examination, before deciding if SSP can be withheld.
• If Medical Services decide that an employee has grounds for their continuing absence, you should continue (or reinstate) SSP.
• If the advice is that the employee can work, you can choose not to pay SSP, but must explain why.
• If the employee is dissatisfied, they are entitled to a written explanation. If they are still dissatisfied, they can seek a formal decision from HM Revenue & Customs, who will obtain the medical reports from Medical Services. Once HM Revenue & Customs has decided whether or not SSP should be paid, they will inform both you and the employee.

7.4 Always tell employees if levels of sickness absence are putting their jobs at risk.

7.5 If the disciplinary procedure is invoked, make it clear that it is the repeated absence from work, and thus the employee's 'capability' to do the job, that is causing the problem.

• If the process ends in dismissal and a tribunal hearing, it is much easier to justify dismissal on grounds of lack of capability than to get involved in arguments about whether illnesses were real or not.