Employee Absenteeism

Paragon Investigations normally conduct covert private investigations on long-term staff who are off sick and under suspicion.

Our Employee Absenteeism Investigation will discreetly confirm the validity of an employee’s sickness claim.

Employers are entitled to dismiss an employee who is absent from work for a prolonged period if certain procedures are followed. This is known as a capability dismissal.

Short-term illness is covered financially through statutory sick pay and should not impact a business’s operations, however, long term illness has numerous impacts such as reduced productivity, obligation to pay the absent employee and temporary cover, stress on other staff and can affect customer satisfaction.

Employee absenteeism has to be dealt with carefully.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) who governs the Act, is the organisation that imposes penalties and fines and states the following:  ‘Employers have a right to protect their selves, their business, and its interests’.

The ICO Employment Practices Code  States: “It will often be enough for an employer to make a simple mental evaluation of the risks faced by his or her business and to assess whether the carrying out of monitoring would reduce or eradicate those risks”, and “In any case, employers who can justify monitoring on the basis of an impact assessment will not generally need the consent of individual workers”.

Paragon Investigations will present a series of quick impact assessments to ensure Data Protection Act compliance, and all cases are handled discreetly as we act quietly in the background, maintaining a low profile to achieve the best results and success.