‘Seamus Says’ boils down the best bits from Legal Island’s live ‘Employment Law at 11’ webinar into straight-talking takeaways you can actually use. 

Seamus: I think it's really important to do a return-to-work interview whenever someone's been off. I think even if there's been a relatively short period of absence, whether it's been a week or a couple of days or whether it's on a long-term basis. Certainly, on a long-term basis, there should absolutely be a return-to-work interview. But I suspect that the question is more based around the short-term absence.

It can be really frustrating. It can be deflating for the HR manager or for the line manager to have to meet repeatedly with the same employee. I like to call them the Monday-Friday crew, those employees that will always take a Friday. Or if there's a long weekend coming up, suddenly there's an absence on a Friday, and they're making the most of it.

And dare say you have a look at their social media, you might find that they're off up at Portrush or Portstewart away at the caravan for the long weekend. That's the very cynical side of me this morning, I have to say.

But these are important, and there are a couple of reasons as to why return-to-work interviews are important.

It's an opportunity for you to learn from the employee as to what the reason for the absence was. It's an opportunity to flag up to the employee what the expectations are around sickness absence.

Christine: And I think to the question of whether it should be HR or the manager, in my mind it should . . . Tell me if you disagree, Seamus. It should be the manager because it feels less formal. Once you get HR involved, it feels like it's an issue. So, I think HR kind of need to keep their powder dry until such times as official processes and policies start to be followed. That would be my view, Seamus. Would you agree?

Seamus: Yeah, absolutely. And key to all of that, the two aspects are what does your policy and procedure say, and are you following it? And two is the training of managers in relation to dealing with these issues.

The job of HR is to make sure that the managers are appropriately trained and that they're asking the right questions. Often, they'll be given a pro forma form to work through the employee with on a return-to-work interview.

But absolutely, I think there needs to be that escalation point as well, where the employee can see, "Well, I've got away with this for a couple of my absences, but if it's heading into that sort of formal aspect, we are bringing HR in". I think that it's better to have that escalation happening as well.

Always the responsibility should be with the line manager. The line manager should be coming to HR for the advice and for the guidance as to how to deal with it, but it falls to the manager, and they need to be appropriately trained on how to deal with it.