If employees feel ill and cannot come to work, they must first inform their employer. But does it have to be done in person?
If you’re really sick, you just want to crawl into bed. However, employees must first inform their employer that they cannot come to work. Does it always have to be a personal call to the supervisor or can other people do it too?
First of all, the so-called notification obligation is laid down in the law. Employees are therefore obliged to report incapacity to work and its probable duration to their employer immediately.
“A special form is not planned,” explains Jürgen Markowski, a specialist lawyer for labor law in Offenburg. The notification can be made orally, by telephone, by SMS, by fax or by e-mail. And: According to Markowski, relatives and colleagues can also inform the employer about the inability to work.
It is important that the employer is informed – management, the human resources department or the immediate superior are conceivable, if they are authorized to receive the information. “Of course, a message to the works council, the switchboard or the porter is not enough.”
According to the specialist lawyer, other people can be commissioned as messengers to inform the employer. The catch: “If that goes wrong, for example because they forget to send the message before the start of duty, it falls back on the sick person.”
Then there is no proper notification. However, this can be important: If an employee repeatedly violates the obligation to report, in the worst case and after a corresponding warning, they can also be dismissed for behavioral reasons.
About the person: Jürgen Markowski is a specialist lawyer for labor law in Offenburg and a member of the executive committee of the labor law working group in the German Lawyers’ Association (DAV).
(This article was first published on Monday, November 14, 2022.)
