Managing employee absence is one of those HR areas that many businesses quietly muddle through without ever formalising. A quiet word here, a welfare chat there, perhaps a letter when things become persistent. For smaller employers, this informal approach has often felt adequate.
April 2026 changes that calculation entirely. Two significant legislative developments make a properly documented absence management policy not just good practice, but a commercial and legal necessity.
What Is Changing in April 2026?
From 6 April 2026, Statutory Sick Pay becomes a day-one entitlement for every employee, regardless of earnings or contracted hours. The Lower Earnings Limit is abolished and the three-day waiting period is removed. Your part-time receptionist working 10 hours a week now has exactly the same SSP rights as your full-time operations manager.
The practical effect is that more absences will carry a direct cost to the business, across a significantly wider pool of employees than before. That changes the economics of informal absence management overnight.
At the same time, the Fair Work Agency launches on 7 April 2026 as a new national enforcement body with powers to investigate employment practices. Its remit explicitly includes SSP compliance. Employers paying SSP incorrectly, or applying unlawful practices in connection with absence, are precisely the type of non-compliance it exists to address.
What a Good Absence Management Policy Actually Does
A well-designed absence management policy is not primarily a disciplinary tool. Its purpose is to understand why employees are absent, identify whether the employer can do anything to help, protect employees with genuine or ongoing health conditions, and address situations where absence levels are unsustainable for the business.
A properly structured policy will do the following:
Set out a return-to-work process for every absence. A return-to-work meeting with a manager should be standard following any period of absence. This is a brief, supportive conversation to establish the reason for the absence, whether work was a contributing factor, and whether the employer can take any reasonable steps to prevent recurrence. It is not an interrogation.
Define a clear trigger point for formal review. When the trigger threshold is reached, the formal process begins. The trigger is a prompt to have a structured conversation, not an automatic penalty.
Provide a staged formal process if the concern continues. A first written caution, remaining live for 12 months. A final written caution if the trigger is reached again during that period. The possibility of dismissal on notice if absence reaches the trigger a third time during a live final caution. At every stage, the employee receives written notice of the meeting, is informed of its purpose, and has the right to be accompanied.
The Critical Distinction: Absence Management Is Not Disciplinary Action
This is where many employers go seriously wrong. An absence management process and a disciplinary process are legally and conceptually distinct, even though they share some procedural features and can both result in formal cautions or dismissal.
Disciplinary proceedings address conduct: an employee has done something wrong and is being held to account. Absence management addresses capability: the employee may be doing nothing wrong at all, but the impact of their absence on the business nonetheless needs to be managed.
Using disciplinary language and frameworks in absence meetings, or issuing conduct warnings for sickness absence, is legally risky and potentially discriminatory. Employees with underlying health conditions that amount to a disability under the Equality Act 2010 have specific protections in this context, and a poorly constructed absence management process is one of the more common routes to an employment tribunal claim.
Before any formal absence meeting, a manager must ask: is there an underlying health condition? Has the employee disclosed anything that might indicate a disability? Has Occupational Health been involved where appropriate? Has the Equality Act 2010 been considered at every formal stage?
A Word on the Bradford Factor and Why We Don’t Recommend It
Some businesses use the Bradford Factor as their absence trigger mechanism. The Bradford Factor is a numerical formula that weights frequent short-term absences more heavily than a single long-term period of absence, based on the number of separate episodes and total days lost.
At Employment Law Solutions, we do not recommend it as a standalone trigger mechanism, for three reasons:
It is opaque. Employees often struggle to understand their own score, what level triggers formal action, and how their circumstances compare to the threshold. A process that employees cannot follow will not command their trust or withstand tribunal scrutiny.
It is difficult to apply consistently. Different managers across the same business regularly calculate Bradford scores differently or fail to recalculate after a rolling period resets. Inconsistent application undermines any subsequent formal proceedings.
It tells you nothing about why. A high score might reflect a genuine disability, a serious personal situation, or a pattern of avoidance behaviour. The formula treats all of those identically. A well-designed policy needs to surface the reasons, not just produce a number.
If your business uses the Bradford Factor and intends to keep doing so, you should at minimum publish clearly defined threshold scores, communicate them to all employees, train managers to calculate and apply the score consistently, and document every calculation in writing. Without that structure, the Bradford Factor creates more litigation risk than it resolves.
Our preference is a straightforward trigger based on frequency of absence episodes. It is easy to explain, easy to apply, and far more defensible.
Reasonable Adjustments and Protected Characteristics
Any absence management policy must be applied with care wherever an employee has a disability or an underlying health condition that qualifies for protection under the Equality Act 2010. Disability is broadly defined and covers many conditions that employers do not instinctively think of in those terms: depression, anxiety, stress-related illness, endometriosis, chronic back conditions, diabetes, and more.
Where a pattern of absence is connected to a disability, an employer may be required to make reasonable adjustments before taking formal steps. Those adjustments might include modified trigger points, altered duties, flexible working arrangements, or a phased return following a period of long-term absence. Proceeding to formal warnings without first considering reasonable adjustments is one of the most straightforward ways to convert a routine absence management case into a disability discrimination claim.
The Connection to What Is Coming in January 2027
Getting absence management right now matters even more in the context of what is on the horizon. From January 2027, the unfair dismissal qualifying period drops from two years to six months. A dismissal for persistent short-term absence that currently carries limited legal risk because the employee has under two years of service will, in less than a year, be fully scrutinised by a tribunal.
If your absence management process is informal, inconsistent, or lacks documentary evidence of a fair procedure, that level of scrutiny is not something you want to face. A properly documented absence management policy, applied consistently, is one of the most reliable defences an employer has at employment tribunal.
What Should You Do Now?
If you do not have a written absence management policy, draft one before April 2026. If you have one but it has not been reviewed recently, now is the time to revisit it. Check that it clearly distinguishes between absence management and disciplinary proceedings, builds in Equality Act 2010 considerations at every formal stage, uses a transparent and consistently applied trigger mechanism, and that your managers are trained to operate it correctly.
How Employment Law Solutions Can Help
Employment Law Solutions works with businesses across the UK on a retained basis, providing practical employment law and HR support whenever it is needed. We draft and review absence management policies, advise on individual cases, support managers in conducting absence meetings lawfully, and represent employers at tribunal when matters escalate.
If your absence management framework is not where it needs to be, we would be glad to help you get it right before April. Absence costs money. Getting it wrong at tribunal costs significantly more. Speak to Employment Law Solutions today for a free consultation. Visit employmentlawsolutions.co.uk or call us to speak to an adviser.
This article reflects the law as at March 2026. It is for general information purposes and does not constitute legal advice.
