Sick Pay Policies

Use Every HR to calculate sick pay to the exact policies you use for teaching and non-teaching staff at your school or trust. Define who is eligible for sick pay policies, set logic for what salary percentage your employees will earn while off sick.

You can set up property-wide default sick pay policies, define custom sick pay policies for any entitlement groups, or assign specific pay policies to individual employees.

Please note:

To set up and apply sick pay policies on Every HR, you will need the following use permissions:

  • Employees > Edit All Employees

  • Employees > Edit Settings

  • Employees > Manage Entitlements Groups (if applying policies to entitlement groups)

  • Absence > Edit Absences (for either direct reports or all absences)

For more information on permissions, please see our Every HR permissions glossary.

Find your sick pay policies

You will find your default sick pay polices by going to the Employees module, choosing the Settings page, and selecting the Payment Policies tab. The tab contains a sub-tab called Sickness Policies with three sections.

The first section lists all the sick pay policies currently set up at your property. By default, these will list the standard ‘Burgundy Book’ and ‘Green Book’ policies.

In the two sections below this, you will find tables displaying which sick pay policy has been set as the default for teaching staff and non-teaching staff respectively. By default, the ‘Burgundy Book’ policy will be set as the default for teaching staff, and the ‘Green Book’ for non-teaching staff.

Create a new policy

Follow these steps to create a custom sick pay policy with your own rules and parameters. To adapt an existing pay policy, see the Update an existing policy section below.

How to create a sick pay policy and define its rules:

Step One - Create a policy

Go to the Employees module, choose the Settings page and select the tab for Payment Policies.

On the ‘Sickness Policies’ sub-tab, select the ‘Create Policy’ button.

Step Two - Add information

You will now be asked to define your sick pay policy. A window will appear asking you to enter the following information:

  • Give your sick pay policy a title that makes it easy for you and others within your organisation to understand what it is and does.

  • Employee Length of Service Type - This field asks you to choose how the length of an employee’s service is calculated.

    ‘Length of Continuous Service’ refers to how long the employee has worked within any employment within this local authority.

    ‘Length of Continuous Service Within Organisation’ refers to the time the employee has worked at this school, or organisation.

    ‘Length of Time in Role’ refers to how long they have been in their current role.

  • Absence Duration Type - This field asks you to set how absence duration will be calculated in this pay policy. You can choose to base absence duration on an employee’s working days lost, or choose ‘calendar days’ to select a custom pattern for a standard working week.

  • Period - This is sometimes referred to as the ‘reference period’. For teaching staff, this is usually calculated from April – March, while the previous rolling year is typically used for non-teaching staff. You can also choose to base your reference period on the calendar year, financial year, or school year.

  • Notify User - This field gives you the option to notify a user or user group of any changes that are made to this sick pay policy. This could be useful for keeping line managers and senior leaders up to date on changes to your HR policies.

  • Notes - This is a space for you to add any notes, such as additional information about the policy you are setting up.

Step Three - Add pay lines

Next, you will be asked to set the rules for this sick pay policy. Rules are set up in ‘lines’ where each line defines the percentage of pay the employee will receive after a given number of days sick, as well as what continuous service they will require to be eligible for this, and whether statutory sick pay (SSP) is included.

Click ‘Add Line’ to get started. For each new line you will be asked to fill out the following information:

  • Years Service - Set the minimum time (in years) an employee should have worked to be eligible for this line of the policy.

  • Months Service - Set the minimum time (in months) an employee should have worked to be eligible for this line of the policy.

  • Percentage Pay - Set what percentage of their overall pay an employee will receive if the conditions of this line are met.

  • Pay Change After - An employee can be off sick for this number of days before this condition applies. You can choose whether this is calculated as calendar days or working days lost in the ‘Absence Duration Type’ field above.

  • SSP Included - Set this to ‘YES’ if statutory sick pay is included in this condition.

You can delete a line by selecting the red ‘X’ icon.

Once you are happy with all the criteria you have entered, click ‘Save’. This will set up your new sick pay policy and add it to the table on the Sickness Pay tab within Employee Settings.

Update an existing policy

You can make changes to any sick pay policy you have created previously, or even amend the default ‘Burgundy Book’ and ‘Green Book’ policies to your liking.

To do this, find the policy you would like to change in the table on the Payment Policies tab in Employee Settings, and choose the edit pencil.

Once you have made your changes, be sure to select ‘Save’ to apply them.

Set the default policy for teaching and non-teaching staff

By default, your sick pay policy for teaching staff will be the ‘Burgundy Book’, and your policy for non-teaching staff will be the ‘Green Book’.

You can change these defaults to any policy you have created.

How to change the default sick pay policy for teaching and non-teaching staff

Step One - Find your default policies

Go to the Payment Policies tab in Employee Settings and find the tables labelled ‘Default Policies – Teaching’ and ‘Default Policies – Non-Teaching’.

Step Two - Attach a sickness policy

Select the ‘Add Sick Pay Policy’ button below either of these tables. This will load the ‘Attach Sickness Policy’ window.

Set the effective date for this change. On this date, the sick pay policy you are choosing will supersede the previous policy.

Select 'Save.' Your new sick pay policy will be listed in the ‘Default Policies’ table. Policies with effective dates in the future will not yet be the default policy. The policy with the most recent effective date in the past will be the current default policy.

Step Three - Approve multiple employees

Use the dropdown to locate the sick pay policy you would like to make the new default from your chosen effective date.

Apply a sick pay policy to an entitlement group

Entitlement groups are a great way to grant allowances to employees that meet certain criteria. One of these allowances could be a custom sick pay policy for staff with a particular duration of continuous service.

How to apply a custom sick pay policy to an entitlement group:

Step 1 - Set up your custom salary formulas

Check the custom sick pay policy is listed in the ‘Sickness Pay – Policies’ section on the Payment Policies tab in Employees Settings. If not, see above to learn how to create your own sick pay policy.

Go to the Entitlement Groups tab on the Employee Settings page.

Step 2 - Find and edit your formula

Find the entitlement group you would like to assign your custom sick pay policy to.

Select the link icon to the right. This will take you to a page displaying the details of this entitlement group. At the bottom of this page you will find separate sections to add a sick pay policy for teaching and non-teaching staff.

Select the ‘Add Sick Pay Policy’ button under the relevant table. This will load the ‘Attach Sickness Policy’ window.

Step 3 - Add your entitlement groups

Set the effective date for this change. On this date, the sick pay policy you are choosing will apply as the default for either the ‘teaching’ or ‘non-teaching’ employees in this entitlement group.

Use the dropdown to locate the sick pay policy you would like to make the new default from your chosen effective date.

Select ‘Save’ to apply your changes.

Sick pay polices inherited through an entitlement group will override the default sick pay policy that an employee would otherwise be assigned.

Apply a sick pay policy to a specific employee

By default, an employee’s sick pay policy will be determined by the default policies you have set on the Payment Policies tab in Employees Settings.

If an employee is part of an entitlement group with a sick pay policy assigned to it and meet all the criteria for that sick pay policy, this will override the defaults to become their active sick pay policy.

However, you can also create a sick pay policy and apply it to an employee directly. This method will overrides all other defaults for this employee.

How to manually override the sick pay policy for a specific employee

Go to the Employees module, expand the Details menu and choose the All Employees page.

Locate the employee in question and select the eye icon to view their employee record.

Set a name and effective dates

On the employee’s record, go to Job Information, and select the ‘Edit Details’ button at the bottom of the page to make changes.

Here you will be prompted to Set Effective Date for your policy.

Set term-time or pro rata weeks

Return to the Contract Information section above and choose the correct sick pay policy for the employee from the ‘Override Sick Pay Policy’ dropdown.

At the bottom of the page, select ‘Save’ to apply your changes.

Override a sickness policy on a specific absence

You can also override the pay calculation for a specific absence instance. This means that while the employee may have a sick pay policy applied automatically by the system, the sick pay calculation for pay during a specific instance of sick leave could be calculated differently.

Please note:

Changing a pay line on a specific employee absence is only possible with an Every Payroll integration.

How to manually override the sick pay calculation for a particular absence instance

Step 1

Go to the Absence module and choose the Absence Records page.

Locate the employee in question and select the eye icon to view their absence record.

Step 2

In the absence record, locate the absence instance in question. You can search for this in the Calendar View or List View tabs. When you find it, click the title of the instance or the edit pencil icon to open it in edit mode.

Step 3

On the Edit page, you will see the details of any sick pay policy listed in a table below the ‘Absent For (Days)*’ field. Select the red ‘X’ on the right to remove the sick pay policy.

Select the ‘Add Pay Changes Line’ button below the table to choose a custom active date and pay percentage for this absence instance. You can also choose whether statutory sick pay is or is not included.

Select ‘Save’ to apply your changes.