Things businesses need to keep in mind before giving employees sick leave

For employees who apply for long-term sick leave, managers should consider and plan for a few things below:

Talk to your employees

If you've determined that an employee may be on sick leave for an extended period of time, the first step is to talk to the employee about the illness. Work with them to find solutions to see if they can handle work from home during sick leave, as well as effective ways of communicating between employees and the company during this time.

Have a clear sick leave policy

If the company has a sick leave policy, the human resources department should instruct employees to follow this process to ensure fairness and consistency. If not, the human resources department should provide feedback on employee rights and obligations information during sick leave upon receipt of a sick leave application.

Certificate from a medical facility

Managers should ask employees to provide documents confirming the need for sick leave issued by medical facilities, especially if the sick leave may take place for a long time. From these documents, the human resources department can rely on the treating doctor's recommendations to make a more accurate decision about the number of days to allow sick leave.

Recruiting temporary staff

In case employees need to take sick leave for a long time to serve treatment and recovery, which means they cannot work flexibly from home, businesses should have a plan to find temporary replacement staff. time. The human resources department can re-allocate appropriate tasks to team members and groups to ensure that important jobs can still take place on schedule.

Dismissal

This is a decision no one wants to make for an employee who is struggling or ill. However, if the period of sick leave is predicted to be too long, or the employee cannot ensure the health for the job, the manager must have a plan for this case. In order for this decision to go smoothly and not create negative opinions, the human resources department should have a discussion and agreement with the employee about to be fired about the regulations on job handover, benefits, support from the enterprise and social insurance that employees will enjoy during this illness.

Strengthen prevention

In the case of many employees taking sick leave due to the same infectious disease such as flu, chickenpox, dermatology, etc., or at times of epidemic outbreaks, enterprises should have cleaning and disinfection work, arrange an area for hand washing, create a well-ventilated environment ... at the office and propagate disease prevention for employees to avoid the spread and spread of diseases.

Health care for employees

In some specific industries such as healthcare, IT, stock market, banking, office, etc., employees often have to work with high intensity, long duration, a lot of stress and pressure. Therefore, businesses should have solutions to organize or encourage employees to participate in healthy sports and entertainment activities, protect their health, and help employees stay healthy both physically and mentally.