Is this 1 or 2 periods of sickness?

A question about : Is this 1 or 2 periods of sickness?

My friend has been diagnosed with an eye condition which requires operations on both eyes with a gap of 8-10 weeks between the ops.

Now after the first operation, she should be fit for work after 1.5 weeks off post op.

The reason both eyes cannot be operated on at the same time as the first 5-7 days she would see very little plus all eye surgeons do this practice.

So would employers class this as one sickness or two? My friend's employer like with many nowadays imply this rule - 3rd period of sickness in 12 months, employees get an investigation into their sickness. Then disciplinary. My friend had already one sickness end Nov/early Dec with a severe chest infection.

My friend says hardly anyone in HR is in at work. Nothing in the employee handbook.

If her employer classes her operations as 2 periods of sickness then my friend is worried that she would be disciplined for no fault of her own. She is a member of the union.

What do you think is the case? Have you had a two stage operation and went back to work for the interim period once had time off to recover?

Best answers:

• As this is planned most would be looking at holiday or unpaid leave to cover it rather than it being classed as "off sick".
  Some employers will count a reoccurance of a condition within a short period as a continuation of the former rather than a new sick period but doubt that the ~8 weeks would qualify as such
• I don't believe surgery etc count as sick leave in this situation, due to it being relating circumstances, however this is entirely dependant on the organisation she works for.
  I've seen a similar situation in my old place of work, and I think that this person took their first X weeks as sick leave, and the rest as unpaid, or restricted pay.
  Like I say, the best advice I can offer is to get her to chat to her manager, or wait to get someone in HR. I'd be surprised if they took 2 operations for the same circumstance as 2 separate sick periods
• I would consider this as two incidents of sickness.
  Since it is a planned op, the person should really be looking at taking leave rather than treating it as sick leave. Or at the very least, take the second lot off as a leave - paid/unpaid.
  My personal opinion. None of this matters as they will only know when they check with their own employer.
• To be honest I do not think it matters whether they link the two periods of sickness or not.
  This policy is usually in place to look for patterns of absence where the employee needs help/support/disciplinary action because of malingering.
  In your friend's case this is surgery with a specific medical reason for the second period.
  If they follow their procedures strictly to the letter and count this as the third period of sickness then I can not imagine that she would be disciplined for this.
  If she is then she has her union to support her.
  Hopefully she would have let her line manager know what is happening and the suggestion that this period was taken as holiday would have been raised then. Was it?