Where these figures come from
Every statutory point below is sourced to GOV.UK and listed with its page and the date it was read at the foot of this post. Employment law changes quietly — the sick pay rules on this page were corrected on our own site this month after the old ones had been wrong for a while — so treat this as general information rather than advice, and check the linked page before you act on anything that matters.
Short answer
A UK employer has three duties when someone returns from sickness absence: treat them as not fit for work if you cannot agree the changes a fit note suggests, make reasonable adjustments where the Equality Act applies, and keep sickness records for three years from the end of the tax year. A fit note is required only after more than seven days ill in a row, counting weekends. A phased return is an example of a reasonable adjustment, not a separate entitlement.
Written by
Subhan Khan, Founder
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UK Employment Law
Most guidance on returning to work after illness mixes two different things together: what the law requires of you, and what a good manager does anyway. Both matter, but confusing them is expensive in opposite directions. Treat a legal duty as optional and you have a tribunal problem. Treat a courtesy as a duty and you build a process nobody can sustain. So this separates them.
The short version, in the only order that matters
Three obligations and two strong suggestions. If you read nothing else, read this.
Must
Treat the employee as "not fit for work" if you cannot agree the changes a fit note suggests. There is no third option where you decline the adjustments and also decline to treat them as off sick.
Must
Make reasonable adjustments where the person is disabled under the Equality Act. This applies to all workers, including trainees, apprentices and contract workers, and it does not depend on the size of your business.
Must
Keep records of leave and sickness absence, and keep them for three years from the end of the tax year they relate to.
Should
Discuss what would help when a fit note says "may be fit for work". GOV.UK puts this as a should, not a must — but see the first row: declining to discuss does not leave you free to insist they work as before.
Should
Hold a return-to-work conversation on the first day back, however short. Nothing requires it. It is the single most useful thing on this page.
Fit notes: what they say and what they oblige
An employee must give you a fit note if they have been ill for more than seven days in a row, and that count includes non-working days such as weekends and bank holidays — so a Thursday-to-following-Friday absence crosses the line even though it is only six working days. Below that threshold they self-certify and you cannot insist on a note. GOV.UK — Taking sick leave
A fit note says one of two things: the person is "not fit for work", or they "may be fit for work". The second is the one that requires something of you. It means the healthcare professional thinks a return is possible given some change — different hours, different tasks, a different place of work, a gradual build-up.
The trap most guidance gets backwards
You are not obliged to make the changes a fit note suggests. You ARE obliged, if you do not agree them, to treat the employee as not fit for work — which means they stay off sick and you keep paying sick pay. So the real choice is between accommodating the return and continuing the absence. What you cannot do is refuse the adjustments and expect the person back on their old terms.
You can take a copy of the fit note; the employee keeps the original. And you cannot require one for a shorter absence — the note is free only when they have been ill more than seven days, and a healthcare professional may charge for one issued earlier.
What you are paying while they are off
Statutory Sick Pay is £123.25 a week, or 80% of average weekly earnings, whichever is lower,
paid by the employer for up to 28 weeks. To qualify the person must be classed as an employee, have done some work for you, and have been ill for at least one full working day. GOV.UK — Statutory Sick Pay: employer guide
Two points worth checking against your own payroll settings and your handbook, because older guidance often says otherwise. The three conditions above are the whole qualifying test: no unpaid waiting period before sick pay begins, and no separate lower-earnings threshold. If your system or your handbook applies either, somebody who is ill is being underpaid.
You can always pay more than the statutory minimum through a contractual or occupational scheme, and many employers do. You cannot pay less. If you offer a scheme, it belongs in the contract, because an unwritten practice that people rely on is harder to change later than a written one.
Reasonable adjustments
Where a worker has a disability or a physical or mental health condition, you must make reasonable adjustments so they are not substantially disadvantaged doing their job. This is the obligation small employers most often assume does not apply to them. It applies to all workers, including trainees, apprentices, contract workers and business partners, and there is no headcount threshold below which it switches off. GOV.UK — Reasonable adjustments for workers with disabilities or health conditions
Whether someone is disabled is a legal test, not a judgement about how unwell they seem. Under the Equality Act 2010 it means a physical or mental impairment with a substantial and long-term negative effect on normal daily activities — where "substantial" is more than minor or trivial and "long-term" means twelve months or more. A long recovery from a serious illness can meet that test even when nobody involved would have used the word disability. GOV.UK — Definition of disability under the Equality Act 2010
- Changing hours, or the pattern of them — later starts, shorter days, fewer consecutive days.
- Changing duties, temporarily or permanently, including removing the parts of a role that are the problem.
- Changing the place of work, or allowing more of it to happen at home.
- Changing equipment, which is often the cheapest adjustment available and the one least often offered.
Reasonable is doing real work in that sentence: it weighs cost and practicality against the benefit, and a small employer is not held to the same standard as a large one. But "we are too small to do anything" is not an answer, and writing down what you considered and why is worth as much as the adjustment itself if the decision is ever questioned.
Phased returns
Worth being precise here, because a lot of writing treats this as an entitlement and it is not one. A phased return — flexible hours or part-time working while someone builds back up — appears on GOV.UK as an example of a reasonable adjustment for an employee who becomes disabled. It is not a separate statutory right that any employee can invoke, and there is no set length for one. GOV.UK — Reasonable adjustments for workers with disabilities or health conditions
That makes it a tool rather than a rule, which in practice is better: you can shape it around the person and the job. Four things worth settling before it starts.
- What the end state is, and roughly when. A phased return without a destination tends to become a permanent reduction nobody agreed to.
- What they are paid during it. If they are working reduced hours, are they paid for the hours worked, topped up from sick pay, or something else? Agree it in writing beforehand; it is the question that causes the argument.
- Which duties are in and which are out, named specifically. "Lighter duties" means different things to the two people in the conversation.
- When you will review it, and what happens if it is not going well. A date in the diary makes the difficult conversation routine rather than exceptional.
If the person is disabled under the Equality Act, a phased return may be one of the adjustments you are obliged to consider. If they are not, it is a sensible thing you are choosing to do — and it is still usually cheaper than a failed return and a second absence.
Records
You must collect and keep records of employee leave and sickness absence, and keep them for three years from the end of the tax year they relate to. This one surprises people because it sits on the payroll side of GOV.UK rather than with the sickness guidance, so it is easy to miss if you go looking in the obvious place. GOV.UK — PAYE and payroll for employers: keeping records
How you keep them is up to you — a spreadsheet satisfies the duty. What a system gives you is that the dates behind a sick pay calculation and the dates behind a return-to-work discussion are the same dates, rather than two records that have to agree. See how leave and absence are recorded in HRMZY.
The return-to-work conversation
Nothing in law requires this. It is here because it is the highest-value thing on the page and it takes ten minutes. Five things to cover, in roughly this order.
- Welcome them back and check they are actually ready to be back. People return early for financial reasons more often than they say so.
- Confirm what the fit note says, if there is one, and what you have agreed to do about it. Put the agreement in writing the same day, even as an email to them.
- Ask whether anything about the job made the problem worse, and listen to the answer without defending the job. This is the question that occasionally prevents the next absence.
- Catch them up on what changed while they were away — decisions, new people, anything moved. Absence is disorienting and the first week back is when people quietly decide whether to stay.
- Agree what happens next and when you will check in again, then actually do it.
Keep a short note of the conversation. It is part of the record you are required to keep anyway, and if a pattern develops later you will want the earlier notes rather than your memory of them.
The short version
Three duties: treat someone as not fit for work if you cannot agree the changes a fit note proposes, make reasonable adjustments where the Equality Act applies, and keep sickness records for three years after the tax year. Everything else on this page is judgement — useful judgement, but not law. Get the duties right, write down what you decided and why, and have the conversation on the first day back.
Sources
Every statutory figure above was read from the official page linked beside it. Nothing here is estimated, remembered or taken from a secondary summary. Oldest reading on this page: 12 September 2026.
- An employee must give their employer a fit note if ill for more than 7 days in a row including non-working days; it says either "not fit for work" or "may be fit for work"; where it says "may be fit for work" the employer SHOULD discuss changes that would help them return, and the employee MUST be treated as "not fit for work" if there is no agreement on those changes GOV.UK — Taking sick leave read 12 September 2026
- Statutory Sick Pay is GBP 123.25 a week or 80% of average weekly earnings, whichever is lower, paid by the employer for up to 28 weeks; to qualify the person must be classed as an employee, have done some work, and have been ill for at least one full working day GOV.UK — Statutory Sick Pay: employer guide read 12 September 2026
- Employers must make reasonable adjustments so that workers with disabilities or physical or mental health conditions are not substantially disadvantaged doing their jobs; this applies to all workers including trainees, apprentices, contract workers and business partners GOV.UK — Reasonable adjustments for workers with disabilities or health conditions read 12 September 2026
- Under the Equality Act 2010 a person is disabled if they have a physical or mental impairment with a substantial and long-term negative effect on their ability to do normal daily activities; "substantial" is more than minor or trivial and "long-term" means 12 months or more. The Act does not apply to Northern Ireland GOV.UK — Definition of disability under the Equality Act 2010 read 12 September 2026
- A phased return to work, including flexible hours or part-time working, is listed by GOV.UK as an example of a reasonable adjustment for an employee who becomes disabled — not as a separate statutory entitlement GOV.UK — Reasonable adjustments for workers with disabilities or health conditions read 12 September 2026
- Employers must collect and keep records of employee leave and sickness absences, and must keep them for 3 years from the end of the tax year they relate to GOV.UK — PAYE and payroll for employers: keeping records read 12 September 2026
Statutory figures on this page link to the official source and were verified on 12 September 2026. Employment law changes — this is general information, not legal advice, and it is not a substitute for professional guidance on your own obligations.