Your Employee Wants to Work While Sick

Shawnee Love   •  
July 18, 2013

After a couple of weeks discussing the requirements and right things to do when your employee is sick, I have had a few people reach out with a twist to discuss:

Employees who want to continue to work while they are involved in their treatments.

These employees take time off work as required to obtain each treatment (and manage the side effects) but work in between.  This solution is a wonderful way to be flexible and supportive (e.g., of your employee’s need to work to keep her mind off cancer and to also minimize the impacts on wages); however, it is not particularly easy to navigate when it comes to short term and long term disability benefits, sick time, and EI medical leave as well as the need to get the work done.

Consider this example:

  • An employee needs 3 days off every 2 weeks to participate in a treatment program which is 5 months long.
  • The company’s benefits program has a 2 week waiting period and requires 40% loss of wages before an employee becomes eligible.

This employee would not qualify for disability insurance benefits nor would she qualify for medical EI (which has the same 40% loss of wages & 2 week waiting period) because she is taking off too few days per week on average (1.5 instead of 2).

She would use up her sick days the first month of treatments and for the remaining 4 months (i.e., 24 more days off work), she would not be paid.

From the business’ perspective, she is away 30 work days during her 5 month treatment which is a lot of missed work to cover using overtime and other employees pitching in.  But it can be hard to hire a temp employee to successfully fill in 3 days every 2 weeks and still ensure work gets done consistently to the level of quality and efficiency required.

The Best Approach

Work with your employee up front to anticipate the impact on benefits, sick time, and work load and figure out a plan together.

Sample Resolutions

I have seen employers move the employee to 100% leave (issue a ROE and help the employee apply for disability) and allow the employee to come in and work on the sly (and bank hours for future time off or future “bonus” paid upon return to work so the bonus doesn’t affect their leave benefits).

I have also seen employers bring in a full time temp to do as much as possible allowing the sick employee to carry an extremely light workload whenever she can come in.

Clearly there are variations in between and while some rules may be bent if not broken in these solutions, employers have to find the right road based on the individuals involved, company culture and benefits, and work to be done.

In doing so, it helps to be compassionate, think carefully through the risks and rewards of each option, get advice if needed, and document what was decided and why to ensure you and your employee are clear and in agreement.  (This is another opportunity for documentation in a follow up email or letter [i.e., being communicative]).

 

Do you have another scenario to share or a comment to make? We’d love to hear from you.