Sick Pay and the Records It Needs

General orientation, not legal or payroll advice. Statutory schemes differ substantially by jurisdiction and change; check the current rules for yours.

Sick pay is where imprecise attendance records become an actual cost.

Why the day counting matters

Statutory schemes commonly have waiting days, a qualifying threshold, a maximum duration, and rules about linking separate absences.

All of these depend on knowing exactly which days someone was absent, including whether a weekend fell inside an absence or between two of them.

A record saying "off sick last week" cannot support any of it.

Record the specific days, including non-working days inside a period of absence, because linking rules frequently count them.

Linked absences

Separate absences close together are often treated as one period under statutory rules, which affects waiting days and the maximum.

Which means the previous absence matters when calculating the current one.

Keep at least the statutory look-back period of history per person, easily retrievable.

A spreadsheet handles this; memory does not.

Company schemes on top

Many employers pay more than the statutory minimum, for a defined period.

Write down the rule: how much, for how long, and whether it resets annually or rolls.

State whether it is discretionary, because a discretionary payment made consistently for years can become an implied term.

Apply it consistently, which is both fair and the way to avoid a discrimination claim.

What payroll needs from you

Exact dates of absence.

Whether each day was a working day for that person.

Whether evidence was received, and for which dates.

Whether the absence links to a previous one.

Give it to them in the same format every time, which for a small business means a simple agreed sheet rather than a message saying someone was off.

Retention

Keep sickness records for the statutory period, which is usually years and differs by jurisdiction.

Keep medical evidence separately, with tighter access and its own — usually shorter — retention.

Delete on schedule. Sickness history from six years ago has no operational use and is a liability to hold.

The check worth running

Once a year, take three absences and recalculate the pay from the records.

If you cannot, the records are not detailed enough, and you will find that out in a dispute rather than in a quiet review.

This is a twenty-minute exercise and it is the only way to know whether the system works before you need it to.

Record non-working days inside an absence

A detail that decides calculations.

Statutory schemes frequently count calendar days, or link absences across weekends.

Which means a record of "off Thursday and Friday, back Monday" is incomplete if the scheme needs to know about the weekend.

Record the whole span of the absence, marking which days were working days for that person.

It costs nothing at the time and it is impossible to reconstruct reliably afterwards.

A concrete product reference

When translating this principle into a buying test, the record-transfer example provides a concrete workflow reference. Verify the current behaviour in a trial, retain the exported evidence and judge it against the purpose and limits described above.

Independent reference

For an external point of reference, see the GOV.UK service. Check the current official rules, rates and eligibility rather than carrying figures from an old policy or spreadsheet.