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Introduction to this document

Letter offering options for performance review meeting

Where an employee is absent on long-term sick leave during a performance management process, there will come a time where you need to progress that process to its conclusion.

Fair procedure

Where an employee is signed off sick pending a formal performance review meeting, your first step is to send them our Letter to Sick Employee Postponing Performance Review Meeting. This postpones the meeting until they’re fit to return to work. If the employee’s sickness absence is only going to be for a short period, it’s reasonable for you to wait until they’re fit to return and then hold the meeting. However, if it appears that their sickness absence is going to be prolonged, don’t just leave matters to drift indefinitely. You should balance the employee’s need for time off to recover their health against your need to conclude the performance management process whilst the alleged poor performance issues are still recent. Thus, at this point, it would be fair to explore alternative options to enable the performance review meeting to go ahead.

Alternative options

There are four main alternative options you should consider offering to the employee:

Holding the performance review meeting at their home or otherwise on external premises (i.e. neutral territory) away from the workplace.
Holding the meeting either by telephone or by live video call.
Allowing them to submit a detailed written statement explaining their position on the performance issues and setting out any mitigating factors they consider relevant to their case, if they feel they’re not fit to attend the meeting in person.
Allowing them to send along a representative to act on their behalf at the meeting if again they think they’re not fit to attend personally - you could limit this to being a work colleague or trade union official or representative as these fall within the statutory right to be accompanied, but, if you want to be as fair as possible, you could extend this to being an immediate family relative.

Letter contents

Our Letter Offering Options for Performance Review Meeting refers to the fact that the meeting has already been postponed once or twice as a result of the employee’s ongoing sickness absence and then it sets out the above four options as a means of progressing the matter. Finally, it asks the employee to confirm which option they’re willing to accept by a set deadline (do give them at least a week to reply), failing which it warns them that you’ll then rearrange the meeting anyway and it’s likely to go ahead in their absence if they fail to attend.