The moment your company employs an employee, the risk of sick pay applies. What happens if your employee becomes ill and it is more than a simple flue?
In the employment agreement there is a paragraph about the situation when the employee becomes ill. If there is not such a paragraph, then the general rules apply. The rules are that the employer is obliged to continue paying the employee a salary during the first 2 years of illness. The employer can pay 170%. That is either 100% in the first year and 70% in the second year, or the other way around. The employer can also decide to pay the employee 100% of the salary in both years.
The employee that is being paid 70% salary can expect the UWV (social institute) to match the other 30% of the income. However, the UWV will pay an amount related to the maximum day rate. Often the employee earns a salary that exceeds the maximum day rate amount, hence the reimbursement received from the UWV is not regarded as being sufficient.
If your employee becomes seriously ill, you need to investigate what are the obligations in this respect of an employer. To be honest, those rules are made such and constantly updated and changed, that you should contact an expert. Why is this important? The moment the UWV expects the employer to take certain action to help the employee reintegrate in the working environment and no action is taken, the maximum period of 2 years sick pay is being expended as a penalty. My opinion is that Government officials with no experience whatsoever in the field of being an employer have invented these rules. Most people associate with employer a huge company with loads of money to spend. Reality is that an employer is an entrepreneur that is not able to do the work alone and offers others an opportunity to have a nice job. No huge company and no loads of money to spend.
Sick pay insurance
The moment your employee is ill, you have two problems. One problems is the employee being ill and you need to continue paying the salary. The other problem is that you pay a person a salary, but due to illness the work is not being done. That implies you need to hire another person that can replace the ill employee to get the work done.
If you realize what is involved related to an ill employee and how expensive this can become, the math of an insurance is easily made and accepted. There are specialized insurance products that cover the costs of the ill employee, so you have no longer double costs. But maybe more important, they put an expert on the case to make sure the obligations set by the UWV for the employer to have the ill employee reintegrate in the working society are being met.
Employers should not be spooked
Foreign employers who learn about the ill employee might prefer not to operate in the Netherlands. In my opinion that would be a strange reasoning. Employees are human beings and human beings can get ill or even sick. That does not imply every employee gets ill. That said, a lot of employees that learn that they perform bad or their contract is not being renewed call in ill the very next day. For that situation we have the arbo expert who will visit the home of the employee to check what is the status of the illness. If this is indeed a faked illness, the employer has a number of choices he can make. From my experience I would strongly suggest this employer first to call his labour lawyer, and then take this action.
Orange Tax Services
We process as substantial number of payrolls. It does happen that sometimes an employee becomes ill, and being pregnant is not an illness or decease. The disappointment of the low UWV benefit makes the illness cure rapidly. But if the illness is genuine, we hope you have an expert organization that assist you in the double costs and obligations to be met.
