Introduction

The Occupational Sickness module enables you to automatically adjust employees’ pay in the current pay period by using the system’s absence records. It will also revise payments that have already been made, should an employee return to work and you weren’t notified.

Employees’ sickness entitlement typically depends on their length of service, which can differ dependent on the type of contract they are on. For an employee to be an entitled to a sick pay allowance, they must satisfy the qualifying conditions defined in the relevant occupational sickness scheme. For example, a scheme might state that when employees are employed for 5 years after the continuous service start date, they are entitled to 6 months full pay and 6 months half pay. After this entitlement has been used, they will then exhaust their allowances and have no entitlement.

Employees might be off on long term sick, for a continuous period of absence or off for several shorter periods. When processing absences through the occupational sickness module, the system will automatically generate the entitlement and payments for SSP and offset them where there is OSP being paid. If an employee exhausts their entitlement for full pay and half pay within a fairly short period, the SSP will become payable up until the maximum number of weeks in line with HMRC guidance.

The following pages will guide you through the setting up of the occupational sickness module to processing the absences: