Employer wanting to know why you are away sick?

Work have just bought out a new sick policy with one of the return to work questions being was the reason for being off sick was due to a road traffic accident, just wondering why they would want to know this.

Can they claim from insurance for your sick pay?

[Mr Speirs]

I think it is more to do with catagorising the absense to find out whether it is mitigating or not.

Also if you were to say the same reason over and over again (like migraine) they could argue that you haven't done all you can to minimalise the chances of absense by not seeing a doctor etc.

Nothing to do with insurance its there to trip up illegitimate absense (of course most 'managers' that conduct the return to work interviews just want to label every absense as illegitimate as that's what they think its there for) and document your absense to trip you up at a later date.

I've just been doing a bit of digging online and it seems it could be to do with claiming from a third party and/or if you claim loss of earnings from a third party then you have to pay it to them (or at least whatever they paid you for sick leve).

[Bri w]

Guessing a bit but what has the reason for the sickness/accident got to do with the illness/injury?

That said, if you are claiming for an accident and you were paid by your employer whilst you were off then your employer can ask that you claim for, and repay, the monies paid to you whilst you were off.

[fastdruid]

Hmmm, highly questionable. Surely if your employer is wanting that money back they should be claiming from the third party, otherwise you need to be claiming for higher loss of earnings.

Certainly I would have thought 'loss of earnings' to be the difference between sick pay and normal pay, not 'normal pay' and then sick pay is a bonus.

IANAL but that sounds to be dodgy ground from an employers POV.

Druid

if your claiming for losing pay they only pay out the difference from sick pay to what your earnings should of been so theres no need to repay your company for having sick pay and lose of earnings.

So basically if you don't make a claim then neither can your employer? Just thinking that if employers started doing this then insurance premiums would go up even more than they already have as the ins co's would be paying large amounts out for sick pay etc...or am I reading this all wrong?

OK another slant on this, do you have to tell your employer why you were off sick? One of the guys I work with put unknown recently and was told he had to put the reason.

if a doctors note was used the reason can be undisclosed, if you find it embarrassing so you dont have to put one in, they cant make you putting one on the form.

Companies dont claim sick pay off insurance companies, if you was off for a bike crash did they ask for the person at fault, insurance details? they ask for reasons so they can complain if your taking days off for constantly for the same thing without seeing a doctor.

Everytime we are sick, we have to fill in a form.

Standard pratice with the company.
Luckily never had to take a sick day!

we always ask the reason why ppl are sick twice, when they call up and again when they self cert / doctors letter