Short term sickness absences and disability

It has been covered a few times and will hopefully be clear to readers that if a worker is absent from work and the reason for the absence is because of a disability related reason then the employer may is likely to be under a duty to make disability related adjustments if, because of those absences the worker is placed at some form of a risk.

The ‘common’ approach

The common way this presents itself is when an employer has a policy of issuing a worker warnings for short term absences. So, suppose the employer has a policy that if a worker is absent for ten days with a common cold then it is not immediately apparent this is related to disability and the worker would not appear to have a discrimination complaint.

Now suppose the worker is absent for 9 days for the common cold and one day because…