If you as a manager have a sick employee, of course you will want them to be back at work as soon as is responsibly possible. On the one hand, because it is not nice to have someone missing from your team, and on the other hand because work can also contribute to a person's recovery (Dutch). That is exactly why the Improved Gatekeeper Law was introduced: to make sure there are fewer employees who are on long-term sick leave.
What does the Improved Gatekeeper Law say?
In the Improved Gatekeeper Law there are rules and responsibilities for all the parties involved in the reintegration of an employee who has been ill. For example, it states that both the employer and employee are required to make an effort to achieve reintegration, but the employer has the active role and bears the final responsibility. The aim is for employers to draw on assistance from a health and safety department or company doctor. Organisations that are working under the Autonomous management model and customised measures monitor for themselves to ensure that they are following the steps set out in the Improved Gatekeeper Law. They may well bring in outside experts, such as a company doctor, for the tasks that they cannot perform legally themselves.
What does the Improved Gatekeeper Law cover?
The Improved Gatekeeper Law states that the employer is responsible for the reintegration of an employee who has been ill and who is on their payroll. They are required to try and reintegrate the employee. In the first year of illness, back into the same job, or into suitable work in their own organisation, in the second year they may also reintegrate the employee into another company. These are known as the first track and the second track. For as long as the employee is sick, the employer continues to pay their salary. If the employee is still ill after two years, then the duty of re-integration lapses as does the requirement to continue paying their salary. The employee can then apply for statutory incapacity for work benefit (WIA) from the Employee Insurance Agency (UWV).
What you as a manager need to know about the Improved Gatekeeper Law
The reintegration process for an employee who was ill has a number of mandatory steps. As a manager in a company that has opted for customised measures, you must keep a sharp eye that all these steps are completed on time and correctly. This means you are closely involved in monitoring and supporting your employee through the reintegration. For example, you create a plan with the employee to tackle this and you jointly readjust this if things change, for example following an appointment with the company doctor. The benefit of this is that you can keep your finger on the pulse, any snags can be flagged up quickly and you can help resolve them. This helps to enable your employee to return to work rapidly and in a responsible manner.
Avoiding legal claims for salary is not the only reason why you want to make sure that the time-lines and staged plans below are followed. It is mainly about providing support, taking your employee seriously and listening to what they need. If more is needed than the stages outlined below, then do these additional things. The contact meetings, for example, do not need to be restricted to once every six weeks, you can define this yourself in consultation with your employee. At the end of the day, you want to define the steps together, and help your employee to do whatever will help them recover.
The time-line and the steps to be followed according to the Improved Gatekeeper Law
If applying customised measures, the employer decides for themselves when the employee who is ill is invited to attend an appointment with the company doctor, as long as this occurs before the deadline defined in the Improved Gatekeeper Law, so before the sixth week of sick leave. When you report your employee sick to the company doctor, and ask them to attend the absentee appointment will depend on the company's absence policy.
Phased plan
- Week 1: depending on the absence policy of your organisation, you report the employee sick and record in the absence tracking system that the employee is ill.
Week 6:
This is the first legally required deadline in the Improved Gatekeeper Law. Problem analysis: in this document, the company doctor describes what the options and limitations are for the employee who is ill, what they can and cannot do.
Week 8:
Plan: jointly with your employee, you draw up an action plan based on the problem analysis. Basically, the goal is reintegration, so that your employee returns to work, to their existing job. You define what actions you will take to achieve this and record the agreements you reach. These can include a variety of measures, which can run simultaneously, such as adaptations to the work and a coaching process.
Every 6 weeks (or more often):
Evaluation: You regularly review the plan with your employee, in order to track progress on reintegration. Is everything going well, in line with the plan, or do you need to adjust things? If the latter, then adapt the existing action plan to suit. You can also agree something different with your employee, maybe agreeing to meet every 3 weeks.
Week 42:
Report illness to Employee Insurance Agency (UWV): the employer reports the employee as ill to the UWV.
Week 52:
First year's evaluation: At the latest in week 52 you need to complete a first year's evaluation, together with your employee. In this you describe how the reintegration is progressing so far.
Week 91:
Final evaluation: as your employee has now been ill for nearly two years, prepare a final evaluation with your employee. This describes the current situation in relation to reintegration. You also need to include the opinion of the company doctor.
Application for incapacity for work benefits (WIA): after two years of illness, your employee can apply for WIA benefits. Various documents are required for this, including the reintegration report.
The above steps required by law and defined in the Improved Gatekeeper Law are important, because you run the risk of a salary-based fine if you did not make to the required efforts for re-integration. That can mean that your employer then has to continue paying a salary for one more year.