Like many areas in employment law there is no list that I can give you to simply tick off. There is, however, one rule you should always follow when this situation arises – keep talking to each other.
The employee’s obligation is to keep the employer informed as much as they can about when they will be able to return to work. When someone is on ACC this information is often relayed through an ACC case worker and I know through experience that case workers can spend a lot of time liaising with an employer about an injured employee’s return to work.
If an employee is ill, however, it will be the employee that needs to keep the employer informed. It is not enough to tell an employer that you have, for example, glandular fever and you have no idea when you will be back at work. An employer has to run their business and to do that needs to organise its labour force. In my view the best option for an employee is to tell the employer they can ring and speak to their doctor direct. It may be that the doctor cannot say exactly when the employee will be able to return to work but at least the employer knows that the employee is being upfront with them about their condition.
Yes an employer can make arrangements to hire someone to do an absent employee’s job. This can be done by employing someone on a fixed term agreement i.e. a new person comes on until the sick/injured employee returns. What an employer cannot do is simply decide without consultation that the employee will be permanently replaced. I have seen situations where a sick employee looks at the newspaper one Saturday to find their job advertised! This is not the way to do it.
There are no rules about how long an employer must keep a job open. The employer has to act reasonably and in good faith. In some jobs it will be easy to temporarily replace someone while they get better. In other jobs it might be nigh on impossible to get someone on a fixed term agreement. Every case will differ. What does not change however is the need for the parties to keep each other in the loop.
