Sickness policy

This policy covers both short and longer term sickness absences. Our aim is to look after the health and wellbeing of all dxw staff and the needs of the company.

Communication of sickness #

If you’re sick, you must let your line manager and a member of the People team know by 10:00am or as soon as you reasonably can after that. This can be done via email, directly on Slack, phone call or text. Line managers will record and monitor sickness for individuals within their teams.

If you’re unwell and know that you’re going to be off for a period of time, or have been signed off by your GP until a certain date, you don’t need to update your line manager daily. Let them know when you will be checking in again so they know when to expect to hear from you.

When you return to work, you must check your sickness has been correctly recorded in BreatheHR, update it if necessary and mark yourself as returned to work. Your line manager will then review and close the sick leave. If you’re sick for more than 7 calendar days in a row, you’ll also need to provide a doctor’s note.

Absence meetings #

Your line manager should check-in with you on a regular basis about your wellbeing, and catch up with you after any sickness absence to see how you are. If you’re sick for more than 7 working days over a rolling 12 month period, your line manager will invite you to an absence meeting to discuss your health. Where appropriate, we’ll talk about how we can support your return to work and any temporary or permanent adjustments which might help improve your wellbeing and support you to need fewer absences. We might also agree an action plan and / or a review period. Where we think it would be helpful, we’ll seek advice via an Occupational Health advisor.

If you have a long term health condition and would like to discuss reasonable adjustments and ways of working that will help, we welcome a conversation at any point. The sooner we know, the sooner we can support you.

Sick pay #

Within any rolling 12-month period, you’ll receive:

• full pay for the first 12 days of sickness absence
• half pay (but no less than living wage) for the next 8 days of sickness absence
• real living wage for the next 10 days of sickness absence
• statutory sick pay after 30 days of sickness absence

There’ll be circumstances where we’ll make exceptions, because it’s not possible to write a policy that is fair in every situation. This structure will form our starting point for those decisions. All decisions on exceptions will be made by the Directors’ group. Our aim is to ensure that we’re treating everyone fairly and consistently, while being aware of our financial requirements.

Long term medical treatment #

Regular and open communication with your line manager is important to ensuring we can support you in the best possible way through a period of long term medical treatment (a period of more than 2 weeks).

If you need long term medical treatment that would affect your ability to work as normal, but you’re still able to work, we will support this wherever we can. We may consider a change of project or role where that’s an option.

If you finish your treatment, you’ll have a meeting to help your return to work, or to normal working hours, and ensure your ongoing wellbeing is supported. We may look at a phased return for example.

Escalation #

If your sickness absence continues for 3 months after an absence meeting, your line manager will set up a further meeting to discuss your situation. We will look to make any further reasonable adjustments to help you get back working. This might include looking for a suitable alternative role that fits your circumstances better.

Where we’re unable to reach an agreement that means you’re able to maintain a reasonable level of attendance for work, we may consider your dismissal. We will only do this after we have exhausted all other options.

Changes to this page must be approved by a member of the Senior Leadership Team.

Last updated: 30 November 2023 (history)