Sickness absence review meetings

What is a sickness absence review meeting?

It's a planned conversation held during a long absence, or after a run of short ones, to understand the situation and agree what happens next. Acas notes that during an absence, “depending on the circumstances, any meetings might be called ‘welfare meetings’” - the name varies, the purpose shouldn't.

The purpose is threefold: check how the person is, work out what support or adjustments would help, and set the next step with a date on it. Everything else - the absence figures, the policy, the trigger point - is context, not the agenda.

Two things it is not. It's not a fishing expedition for the diagnosis, and it's not a warning delivered in a friendly voice. If you're actually holding a formal stage, say so in the invitation and run it properly.

How is it different from a return-to-work chat and a capability hearing?

These three get muddled constantly, and the muddle is what creates unfair-process claims. They differ in trigger, in outcome, and in the rights attached.

The practical rule: if the meeting could end with a formal consequence, it isn't a welfare meeting, whatever you call it in the diary.

Can an employee be accompanied at a sickness absence review meeting?

Not automatically - and this is worth getting exactly right, because plenty of published guidance overstates it.

The statutory right comes from section 10 of the Employment Relations Act 1999, which applies where a worker “is required or invited by his employer to attend a disciplinary or grievance hearing” and “reasonably requests to be accompanied at the hearing”. Section 13 defines a disciplinary hearing as one which could result in “the administration of a formal warning… the taking of some other action… or the confirmation of a warning issued or some other action taken”.

A genuine welfare meeting can't produce any of those, so the statutory right doesn't attach. The Acas Code of Practice makes the parallel point about investigations: “Although there is no statutory right for an employee to be accompanied at a formal investigatory meeting, such a right may be allowed under an employer's own procedure.”

Three caveats that matter more than the rule:

• Your own policy may grant it. If it does, that's binding on you regardless of the statute.
• Allowing it costs nothing. A colleague or union rep in a welfare meeting usually improves it. Refusing looks like something to hide.
• It may be a reasonable adjustment. Where the employee is disabled - particularly with a mental health condition - having someone present, or written questions in advance, may be exactly the adjustment the Equality Act 2010 requires.

Once the process moves into a formal capability stage, the right applies and the Acas Code's fairness principles apply too: where an employer has a separate capability procedure, “the basic principles of fairness set out in this Code should still be followed, albeit that they may need to be adapted”.

What questions should you ask in a welfare meeting?

Open, and about work - not about the illness. Use these as prompts rather than a script.

What not to ask: what the diagnosis is, whether they're “really” ill, when exactly they'll be back, or anything that starts “you do realise the policy says…”. If you need clinical input, that's a referral - see when to refer to occupational health and the OH referral letter template.

What should you record?

Enough that a successor could pick it up, and no more health detail than the decision needs.

1. Date, attendees, and whether it was in person, by phone or at the employee's home.
2. What support and adjustments were discussed - including what was offered and declined.
3. What was agreed, who's doing it, by when.
4. What evidence was considered: fit notes, any OH report, what the employee said about timescales.
5. The next review date.

Write about the effect on work, not the condition. “Struggling with sustained screen work; agreed 90-minute blocks with breaks” is a useful record. Copying clinical detail into a manager's notes is not, and it's special category data under Article 9 of the UK GDPR either way - restricted access, defined retention.

How often should you hold one?

At an agreed frequency, not an imposed one. Acas's guidance on keeping in touch is that employers “should agree the purpose, type and level of contact with the employee… to make sure it's useful and not overwhelming”. For a long-term absence, roughly monthly is common; for a fit note that expires in three weeks, diarise the review before the expiry, not after.

Where the trigger was frequent short absences rather than one long one, check your thresholds first - see sickness trigger points, the Bradford Factor (or work out a score with the Bradford Factor calculator) and what must be excluded from it. Where a return is in sight, turn the meeting into a written phased return plan and check the note against the fit note employer guide. For mental health absence the pacing of contact is the whole game - see the mental health absence guide. And if you're weighing what OH could add, what an employer can ask occupational health and what happens if they refuse cover the limits.