Sickness absence in an SME: you want support, without being left to it

A business owner with ten employees has no HR department, no absence coordinator and certainly no time to become an expert in the Gatekeeper Improvement Act (Wet verbetering poortwachter). So the moment someone calls in sick, things start to shift. Tomorrow’s schedule, the project at a client, the colleagues who have to pick up the slack. And all the while the clock is ticking, because a poorly set-up absence record or a missed step in the protocol can lead to a wage sanction further down the line.

“That’s what we see every single day,” says Denise van Schie, Sector Manager SME at Capability. “In a small or medium-sized business, the impact of sickness absence is always greater than the figures suggest. And the knowledge to handle it properly often isn’t there in-house.”

Case manager Patricia Stolk recognises this from her daily work: “Many of the SME clients I speak to are small businesses where sickness absence simply isn’t a day-to-day concern. And they’re often not up to speed on the legislation either. I get questions about filling in an action plan, about what adapted work involves and about how to get someone back to work. Simply because they don’t have the time to figure it out themselves.”

Taking the burden off doesn’t mean taking over

On the one hand, SME owners want the burden taken off their hands; ideally, though, they also want to keep a grip on things. Denise puts it plainly: “In practice, we see that business owners often hope they’re done once they’ve reported the absence. Capability handles the rest. But that’s not how it works. Every party carries a responsibility, and the employer’s responsibility lies, by law, with the business owner. We can’t and won’t take that responsibility over, but we do make it concrete. We guide the business owner step by step through what they need to do themselves. Through clear updates, a system that gives the employer a nudge when there’s an employer task to complete, and a case manager as the point of contact for any questions.”

Patricia notices it in many first conversations. “We often have to explain which responsibility sits with the employer, which with the employee and which with us. In fact, I can only build a solid record if the employer plays their part too: reporting the absence on time, passing on partial recovery and having the right conversation with their employee.”

In this short video, we explain exactly which responsibilities lie with the employer and which with the occupational health service.

The employer stays involved, throughout the process too

At fixed points in the absence process, Capability sends the employer a questionnaire. “We ask, among other things, how contact with the employee is going, how many hours they’re back at work in their own or adapted role, and which questions are outstanding for the next point of contact with the case manager,” Denise explains. “We do that to keep the employer’s role active throughout the process. We put the answers to use as we go. It takes three to make the difference: employer, employee and us as the occupational health service. For that to work, it’s important that we collaborate and get the full picture.”

Attention and action: no contact without a next step

Alongside that active involvement from the employer, Denise sums up the heart of the approach in two words: attention and action. “Attention means we’re in touch more often than the law requires. If you speak to someone once every six weeks, you have less impact on the process. Speak to that same person every four or five weeks and you can exert influence and plant seeds to build on next time. Guiding rather than ticking boxes. But attention is also about what happens within that conversation: really listening, and getting to the bottom of what’s genuinely holding someone back from returning to work. That isn’t always the visible complaint. Sometimes it sits in the home situation, in financial pressure or in addiction issues. You only uncover that if you take the time to keep asking.”

And attention on its own isn’t enough, as Patricia feels in her conversations with employers. “We’re accessible to employers for advice and guidance. We schedule a discussion and go through which steps need to be taken. I then attach concrete actions to that, and where needed we deploy targeted interventions in the absence process to support a lasting recovery.”

Task delegation: speed and a familiar face

Denise: “With us, the case manager works under the task delegation of the occupational health physician. That means we can often act quickly, without you having to wait weeks for an appointment. Whether it’s a question about an intervention, a change to the action plan or a second opinion from the occupational health physician: for the business owner, the case manager is the familiar face and the one who knows the case.”

A structured absence system

With many SME owners, the instinct is to pick up the phone and quickly ask something. Understandable, but not always the best route, because the case managers spend a large part of the day in consultations. “Aside from the contact at fixed points, we ask employers to put their questions to us through XpertSuite, our system,” Denise says. “For a clear reason: the question and the answer go straight into the record, privacy is safeguarded, progress is easy to track and the case manager responds quickly with an accurate, well-informed answer. If a phone call is preferable, we’ll schedule one, of course.”

For the employer, that means no frustration over a phone that isn’t always answered, no questions left hanging, and a case manager who, at the moment of answering, genuinely has the right case in front of them and the time to look at it properly. “An approach an SME owner gets a great deal out of,” Denise concludes.

That the approach works in practice is clear from the experiences of long-standing clients. In this story from our client BQA Consultancy, about a now 15-year partnership with Capability, you can read among other things how working through XpertSuite plays out day to day.