The Government has announced proposals to overhaul the current system for signing employees off work. There is a perception that the current system lacks subtlety in having General Practitioners certify that an employee is either fit or unfit. There is no middle ground, i.e. to state that the employee is fit for some work, and normally the employer will have to write to the GP for a medical report in order to establish whether there is some work the employee can do.
The proposal is that there will be a new electronic fit note system where the three options will be “fit”, “not fit” and “may be fit for some work” with details of the illness being given.
The new system is intended to ensure that employees can return to work quicker, on some basis, rather than waiting until they have fully recovered their health. This is not necessarily a substantial departure from the current position given that employers currently have an obligation, if a sick employee has a disability, to consider making reasonable adjustments to tasks, duties etc. to facilitate a return.
The new system could lead potentially to conflict. What is the employer’s obligation regarding payment of salary if the employee is only able to carry out some of their duties? What if the employee disagrees with the GP regarding the ability to perform certain tasks? What if the employer requires an employee to carry out all aspects of their job, rather than just some of them? It may well be that some of these issues will be addressed before the new system is implemented in Spring 2010.
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David Hoey