If you have symptoms of illness please stay at home. The priority is for you to get better and to avoid sickness spreading through the team. This is strictly enforced for highly contagious illness.
During prolonged periods of absence due to illness (7+ days) your Manager and HR (Jess Lakeman OR Meagan Rebelo) should be kept informed of your progress and expected date of return.
If you’re ill for more than 7 days in a row you will need to provide HR with a doctor’s ‘fit note’ (sometimes called a ‘sick note’) This includes non-working days, such as weekends and bank holidays.
Return-to-Work Meetings
If you have been off for an extended period or in certain circumstances, a Return-to-Work meeting will be arranged between you, your manager, and, where appropriate, HR. This meeting will ensure that you are fit to return to work, allow you to catch up on any important updates or missed information, and assess whether any reasonable adjustments are needed to support your return, with your health being the top priority.
Automata will pay your full salary during periods of illness up to 10 working days within a 12 month rolling period, provided the above expectations around communication have been followed. After this period you will be entitled to receive UK Government Statutory Sick Pay.
A 12-month rolling period is a timeframe that is always calculated by looking back over the past 12 months from any given date. Unlike a fixed calendar year (e.g., January 1 to December 31), a rolling period continuously updates, "rolling" forward as time progresses.
A rolling 12-month sickness example involves counting an employee's sick days over the 12-month month period immediately preceding a current absence. For instance, if an employee is absent on April 15th 2025, the company would count all sick days from April 15th 2024, to April 15th 2025, to determine if a policy trigger point has been reached. Such as 10 or more occurrences of sickness