The Fit for Work service was launched on 15th December 2014 to offer impartial advice to employers for dealing with long-term sickness absence. The free service will help employees return to work after they have been on sickness absence for four weeks or more. It will be rolled out in phases, over a period of months this year.
The Fit for Work service aims to offer employers, and employees access to web and telephone advice about work-related health matters. After four weeks of sickness, employees can be referred to the service for an Occupational Health (OH) assessment, the outcome of which (in most cases) should be a Return to Work Plan. This will contain advice and recommendations to help bring the employee back into the workplace.
Where a Return to Work Plan is in place, it will replace the current GP “fit note” that we are used to seeing, in order to certificate an employee’s absence from work
Employees will primarily be referred to the service by GPs, although employers will also be able to refer employees after they have been absent for more than 4 weeks. Whoever refers the employee, that individual must agree to participate in the process. Consent is a key part of the whole regime; an employee is able to withdraw consent at any time, at which point the whole process grinds to a halt.
Employers will be encouraged to act on the recommendations and advice contained in the Return to Work Plan. Complying with these will not be mandatory, and there are no sanctions for employers if recommendations are not followed. However, if litigation subsequently arises, a failure to follow such recommendations could become evidence in any disability discrimination or an unfair dismissal claim.
From 1st January 2015, the Government has introduced a tax exemption of £500 per year, per employee where the employer funds the costs of any medical treatments recommended to help their employees return to work. This will be applicable to treatments recommended by health professionals within Fit for Work (FFW) and health professionals within employer-arranged Occupational Health Services. Employers will not be obliged to fund medical care.
Fit for Work (FFW) was initially called the Health and Work Service but was rebranded in 2014, following complaints from Doctors’ body, the British Medical Association, that the Government was misleading the public by implying it would be a comprehensive OH service. Health professionals are also concerned about how the service will be staffed, as there are limited numbers of OH Nurses and Doctors available. It is intended that FFW will complement existing Occupational Health provision, rather than replace it. The service will be provided by OH provider Health Management on behalf of the DWP.
Government guidance advises employers to update their sickness absence policies to tell staff that the service is becoming available, and explain how it will work. We are changing our client’s sickness absence policies to allow for referral to FFW. This may assist in obtaining an employee’s explicit consent when referring to Fit for Work. Our strong preference would be to use well-established OH professionals, such as Gipping Occupational Health, with a good track record of helping employers. This help might be advising employers:
- on practical adjustments that are reasonable to implement;
- on sensible and measurable return to work programmes;
- on realistic time scales for when they should be returning to work, or have little chance of doing so;
- when the only feasible option is termination of employment;
We expect difficulties over:
- the need for employee consent;
- case workers at Fit for Work not fully understanding the employer’s business, the employee’s job role, or availability of other suitable roles;
- recommendations not being reasonable because of the case worker’s limited knowledge of the employer’s business;
- the fact that it is only a telephone assessment means undue reliability on what an employee wants to do rather then what they actually can do;
- employees having too great an expectation or the opposite, not taking any active involvement in the return to work process;
We believe that good advice to employers is based on a good understanding of the employer’s business, the job the employee normally does and how these interact with the abilities and disabilities of each employee. We are concerned that without this approach we shall receive exhortations to provide ‘light duties’, or phased return, without a proper appreciation of context. It is yet to be seen how effective a telephone assessment may be, especially if the assessor has a limited amount of information about the job role that the sick employee is required to undertake. Nonetheless, employers should start to acquaint themselves with this system as GPs may look to refer more and more employees to this service, to relieve the pressures currently being placed on their limited resources.
A cheap, i.e. free, service to employers may seem like a good idea but it is not one that we could recommend. As the Government Guidance says “While Fit for Work will deliver some aspects of an Occupational Health Service, it will not deliver a fully comprehensive service. Fit for Work will fill the gap in support where that currently exists”. We are not convinced that this will work well in practice. The impacts and causes of employee sickness absence are often complex and sometimes unavoidable, and need professional personalised input. We have always advocated making contact with employees who are likely to exceed 4 weeks absence as they are much less likely to return to work once they are long-term sick i.e. more than 4 weeks.
Our Consultants would be pleased to advise you on any element of the issues arising from this newsletter.
