Employers could take a more relaxed approach on contractual leave to stop employees taking ‘sickies’
Most employers’ rigid working hours do not allow for the odd sun-loving employee who fancies a last-minute day off to enjoy a rare British heat wave.
Up to a third of employers have been struggling with high levels of staff absence since this year’s sunny summer began, according to a recent attitude survey of employee benefits commissioned by the PMI Health Group. According to the study, staff absence costs employers an average of £600 a year per employee. Genuine health reasons aside, are there any steps employers could take to manage absence more cost effectively?
Rules
Employers should remember the law on working time is not as inflexible as they might think.Under the Working Time Regulations 1998, workers are entitled to a minimum of 28 days’ paid leave each year (20 days’ holiday and an additional eight days for Bank and Public Holidays). As a bare minimum, and in the absence of contractual holiday notice requirements, the regulations only require employees to give twice as many days’ notice as they are proposing to take as holiday. For example, an employee seeking one day’s leave need only give two days’ notice of it.
Flexibility
Although employers may feel they need longer contractual notice of holidays to allow them to plan cover for absences, they could consider relaxing the rules down to the statutory notice minimums in order to promote employee engagement and reduce absence levels. They could also look at introducing a flexible scheme for holiday entitlements in excess the statutory minimums in order to reduce short-term sickness absence levels. This would no doubt prove popular among employees.
Under such a scheme, employees could buy or sell holidays, subject to retaining the statutory minimum entitlement and any limits fixed by the employer. This would give greater flexibility to employees to take leave in the summer months without losing out on Christmas time off. Introducing flexible annual leave arrangements would also enable employees to feel more engaged and in control of their working hours, making them less likely to call in sick.
Lieu time
Flexi-time can also help. Employees could be required to attend work for specified core hours and days but adjust their start and finishing times to suit themselves. Such arrangements could also allow employees to accrue ‘time off in lieu’ in addition to their statutory holidays. Any accrued lieu time could then be taken at short notice with management approval.
Records
It’s important that employers’ policies and procedures on annual leave or time off in lieu are clearly recorded in writing and kept up to date to avoid uncertainty and maintain consistency in their implementation. This will ensure that certain categories of employee do not lose out in comparison to others (for example, employees who do not require time off due to childcare should still have the opportunity to work as flexibly as those who do). It’s also important to keep clear and up-to-date records to ensure the system is not abused, removing the potential requirement for subsequent time-consuming disciplinary measures.
Contracts
If employees’ contracts currently require them to give a prescribed amount of notice of holiday, irrespective of the holiday’s duration, a period of consultation should take place first to secure employees’ agreement to any changes. Employers should always keep clear, up-to-date personnel records during any consultation process and obtain written consent to any changes to contractual terms at the end of it, to reduce the risk of receiving future breach of contract claims.
Victoria Clark is an associate with law firm Clarion
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