Each year, Brisbane businesses lose thousands of dollars due to unscheduled employee absence. In many instances, employees leave their work environment during holiday and summer seasons with government agencies experiencing the highest number of absences. If your business can relate to this challenge, your employees could be taking advantage of the benefits underlying sick leave, a practice that is significantly widespread in the corporate world.
While your employees have the right to take time off when they are unwell, employers should have clear mechanisms of ensuring that this right is not taken advantage of to minimize losses. Every employer should develop a clear policy on absence from work due to sickness. When the policy is in place, employees should be made aware of the outcomes of breaching the policy, which should include treating future sick leave days as unpaid lead days.
To ensure that employees adhere to company policies on leave of absence on medical grounds, you’ll need to sufficiently inform them of the mechanisms that your business has to prove that their absence is due to sickness. If you are not sure what your employees should do to satisfy this requirement, here are three things you could require them to do to prove their sickness or fitness to resume work.
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Avail a Doctor’s Certificate
When you take sick leave, it is important that you seek medical care from a credible health facility and get request your doctor to prepare a certificate to prove that you were unwell. During your doctor’s visit in Brisbane, ask your doctor to provide you with a certificate that you can present to your employer to help them understand that you are not faking your illness. Availing a certificate from a doctor to your employer provides him with proof that you were indeed sick. Usually, such a document provides valuable information that shows that the ailment you were suffering from was severe to warrant the time spent outside work.
In preparing the certificate, your doctor should respect your right to confidentiality. As such, the certificate should not provide details of your illness or diagnosis without your consent. However, the certificate should include your name, the name, and address of the doctor issuing it, the date that you were medically examined and the extent to which your illness incapacitated you. Also, your doctor should include the date that he considers you will be able to resume work and his signature. The doctor’s certificate should be addressed to your employer and should clearly show the date when it was prepared.
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Provide Proof of Emergency Medical Leave
If you need to take an emergency medical leave or had already taken one and are coming back to work, you need to get your employer something that shows you need or needed to take a break from work. Usually, your employer will need you to provide proof that is reasonable under the circumstances depending on your situation. For instance, your employer needs to know why the emergency medical leave is or was necessary and the duration of the leave.
It is also important to indicate any such leaves previously taken and how long they were. Though your employer will not require you to present him with a medical note from a registered nurse, psychologist or a doctor in the event of an emergency medical leave, he will need to see such a note if you visit other health professionals including physiotherapists and dentists. In such a case, your medical professional should indicate how long you’ll be away due to the emergency, when you visited the health professional and whether you met the medical professional that is signing the certificate in person.
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Provide a Fit Note
When you have been away from work on sick leave or medical emergency for a period exceeding 7 days, your employer needs to be assured that you are fit to return to work. Such an assurance could be provided by a medical clearance certificate prepared by qualified medical personnel stating that you are fit to resume work. Often, most employees who have documented this requirement in the company policies expect you to present documented proof of your medical fitness before they can process your statutory sick pay. But this should not be the only thing that encourages you to get a fit to work note. The risk of coming across as a disorganized person should also motivate you to supply documented proof of your medical emergency leave.
Ideally, fitness to work provides your employer with proof of your capability to continue working. Some of the details that such a document provides to employers include information relating to your health condition and the additional treatment that you’ll require in the foreseeable future. Where an employee has been away from work for more than a month, the employer can help them later in putting together an effective and secure return to work plan to enable you to resume your full-time employment.