Enhance eSignature Lawfulness for Sick Leave Policy in Australia

How to eSign a document: e-signature lawfulness for Sick Leave Policy in Australia

lauren bernardi is a lawyer and hr advisor at bernardi human resource law based in mississauga ontario she spoke with us about suspicious sick leaves what are some signs that might indicate a sick leave is suspicious there are a few indicators that an employer might look to to consider whether or not a legitimate absence is at play one of them is a patterned absence sometimes you'll see somebody who takes off friday and monday for example or there's a particular day of the week that they take off sometimes it's an indication that there are other things going on there might be a drinking problem so for example they're drinking on the weekend and they're not coming in on mondays or it can be an indication even that they have another job i've certainly had clients where they've had somebody that is consistently absent on a particular day of the week and they discover they're working somewhere else on that day but they're calling in sick the other one that we see quite frequently is where somebody's been put on a performance improvement plan or they've been disciplined and they immediately provide a doctor's note right afterwards and so it's questionable whether or not they are sick or just trying to avoid the stress or the perception that they might be about to be fired what should the employer do to determine whether or not the absence is legitimate i think too often we are actually suspicious more quickly than we should be so in the example i gave about the person who goes off sick right after getting a performance improvement plan or a disciplinary measure they may actually be legitimately stressed and suffering from an anxiety disorder as a result of that so i like to equate it to almost like an environmental allergy so i may be having trouble going to that workplace because the stressors are are too much for me and so i actually am you know having uh an inability to sleep or throwing up on my way to work or all of those things that can indicate an illness so it's a legitimate illness that may have been triggered by these performance improvement plans nonetheless you still need to address them and i think the thing we're most afraid to do is to actually sit down with the person and talk to them so we're saying give us a note do this do that why don't we have a conversation what's really going on is there something i can do to help you because another thing that happens is people will take time off work if there's problems in the workplace they're being bullied they've got a manager who is micromanaging and without having the conversation to delve below the surface we're not able to get to that so i think that initial conversation is very important and then also getting the doctor's notes quite frequently we get a doctor's note that's written on a prescription pad that simply says under medical care will reassess in two weeks which is absolutely useless information so sometimes it's asking the employee to take a note a form to the doctor to fill out talking about what the prognosis is you're not allowed to know what's wrong with them but the prognosis is for the return to work could they come back sooner if the work was modified so trying to work with the physician to get them back that helps to ensure that the absence is actually legitimate what human rights issues should the employer be mindful of when investigating suspicious sick leaves there are a couple of human rights issues that would that would come into it one is that we have a duty to accommodate and the duty to accommodate would we often think of apply to a disability so in the example i gave about somebody who perhaps has a drinking problem then if that's the source of the absence we'll need to look at whether or not we need to accommodate them are they an alcoholic do we need to facilitate them getting into a rehabilitation program so that kicks in our duty to accommodate is there some other form of of disability that is interfering so even back to our performance improvement plan example maybe that's triggering a prior anxiety disorder that the person has and we need to then work with them so we can't ignore the fact that the human rights code exists and our duty to accommodate will exist within that the other one would be even family status so sometimes people call in sick because the employer's policy doesn't allow them to use sick days to take care of sick kids or they don't have a personal day policy and so what happens is people lie because if your kid's sick you're going to take the time off right and so this way if you look at what's really going on there again is that duty to accommodate based on family status so maybe rather than enforcing a rule and getting upset with them you look at maybe expanding your policy to allow them to take the time off to look after their children or an elderly parent so that you're providing that accommodation based on the family measures that they may have so it's really being a little bit broader minded in how we approach these things getting to the root cause of it and making sure we comply with our obligations under the human rights code and if we do that then we're going to have more productive employees so it really is a kind of a win-win but i think we're too often you know trying to enforce a rule so if we have a conversation figure out what's going on work towards a solution then i think it makes it better for everyone