Sick leave request: notification, evidence and return to work

A sick leave request is not a request in the same sense as annual leave. Nobody books illness in advance, and a manager is not approving whether someone may be ill. What the process actually does is record a notification, collect evidence when it becomes necessary, and manage the return to work. Treating sickness like a holiday request — with approval steps and refusals — creates distrust and very little control.

What a sick leave request should capture

• Who is absent and from when — the first day of absence, not the day the form was filled in.
• Expected return date, if known, marked clearly as an estimate.
• A brief reason, only to the extent your policy requires; employees are not obliged to disclose diagnoses to line managers.
• Whether the absence is related to work, which triggers separate reporting duties.
• How and when the employee will next update.
• Contact during absence: whether the employee is happy to be contacted and by whom.

Notification rules worth writing down

1. State who to notify and by when — for example, the line manager before the start of the shift.
2. Say which channel counts: a phone call, a form, a message — and whether a colleague may notify on the employee's behalf.
3. Set when self-certification ends and a medical certificate is required, in line with local rules.
4. Explain how continued absence is updated, so the record does not go stale after day one.
5. Describe what happens to leave and pay entitlements while off sick.

Health information is sensitive personal data. Keep the reason for absence to the minimum the policy needs, restrict who can see it, and never put it in a shared team calendar.

Keep the record, not the diagnosis

The durable record is one entry per absence period: dates, notification, evidence received, return date and whether a return-to-work conversation took place. Ettex Forms can take the sick leave notification with the right fields and restricted visibility, and Ettex Records holds the absence history with any certificate attached — so HR can see patterns without every manager seeing medical details. Team calendars should show only that someone is out, not why.

The return to work

• Hold a short return-to-work conversation after each absence, however brief.
• Confirm the employee is fit to return and whether adjustments are needed.
• Update the absence record with the actual return date.
• Where patterns emerge — frequent short absences — follow the absence management procedure rather than improvising.
• Record any agreed adjustments and review dates.

How sick leave differs from annual leave

An annual leave request is approved in advance against a balance; a sick leave request is notified on the day and recorded. They share a calendar and a payroll consequence, but they need different forms, different visibility and different follow-up. Combining them in one request type is the most common design mistake, and it usually results in health information being visible to people who should not see it.