Repeated short-term absences can justify dismissal if your employer follows a fair process.

The situation

An employee built up a poor attendance record from a series of unrelated short-term illnesses over time. The employer ran an attendance procedure that included informal discussion, warnings and review meetings, and eventually dismissed the employee. The question for the tribunal was whether dismissal for a pattern of absence caused by genuine, unconnected illnesses could ever be fair.

What the tribunal found

The Employment Appeal Tribunal held the dismissal was fair. Persistent, intermittent absence can justify dismissal even where every individual absence was caused by genuine illness, provided the employer followed a fair process. In practice that means the employer made the employee aware their attendance was a problem, checked whether there was a medical explanation for the pattern, warned them clearly that continued absence could lead to dismissal, and gave them a real chance to improve or explain.

The tribunal also drew an important distinction. Where absences come from a string of unconnected minor illnesses rather than one ongoing condition, a medical prognosisA prognosis is a medical assessment of the likely course and outcome of an illness or injury. In employment law, an employer is expected to obtain a prognosis before deciding to dismiss on grounds of ... is often impossible to get, because there is no single condition for a doctor to give one on. In that situation, the employer can manage the problem through the attendance procedure rather than the ill-health capabilityOne of the potentially fair reasons an employer can use to dismiss someone, covering situations where you are unable to do your job to the required standard, including through ill health. A fair capab... process used for long-term sickness.