Bank Holiday Sickness

This year there will be an extra bank holiday on Friday 2nd June 2022 due to the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee, and the late May bank holiday has been moved to the 2nd June, giving us a four day weekend. If an employee is sick over these four days, what should you do?

Where sickness absence occurs on 2nd June, it should be treated the same way as if it occurred on the 30th May, and your actions should be dictated by your usual practice, dictated by the employee’s contract. If that grants the employee the minimum statutory holiday entitlement, i.e. 28 days’ paid holiday which includes bank and public holidays, they should be granted a day’s compensatory paid holiday automatically.

However, where the employment contract grants paid time off on bank holidays in addition to the statutory 28 days’ minimum paid holiday, the employee’s rights to a compensatory day off will depend on the further provisions stated in their employment contract. Thus, it’s possible that they won’t be entitled to a compensatory day off. These same policies can be applied if they are off sick on Friday 2nd June.

If you have decided to grant all of their employees an extra day’s holiday on the additional bank holiday, you need to make sure that you have also made clear what will happen if someone calls in sick on that day. You can provide that no further time off will be granted in the event of sickness absence, but you must be prepared to be flexible if there are extenuating circumstances or it’s connected to a disability or the employee is pregnant.

Withdrawing a job offer

You may make a job offer conditional on many grounds, such as:

• Satisfactory references

• Evidence of right to work in the UK

• Proof of qualifications.

If the individual fails to meet any of these conditions, then you are legally able to revoke the job offer.

However, what is your legal position if you revoke the job offer for any other reason? For example, your business requirements may have been unexpectedly changed since you made the offer, e.g. you’ve lost a key client or persuaded a departing employee to withdraw their resignation etc.

If the individual has already accepted the job offer, then it could be considered a breach of contract to withdraw it, and they may take you to the tribunal as a result. This means that if you do wish to withdraw a job offer you must act fast before the individual accepts it.