Workforce Support Team | Workforce Support Team |
SOP-DE-WFS Process of Sickness | Number of Reviews: 1 |
Approvers: | Date of Review: 23/07/2024 |
INTRODUCTION
This page will provide you with the most important information needed to handle detailed sick leave requests and answer questions from employees.
Guidelines & Policies
How does an employee call in sick?
Immediate Notification: The employee will have to call and notify their hub manager of their sickness on the first day of their sick leave, prior to their scheduled shift (at least one hour before the start of the shift).
Recording Sick Days: The employee must register their sick day using the Workforce application. The notification is important so we can plan accordingly and find a replacement for the absence.
Sick Note Submission: Employee's should create an electronic sick leave request through the app.
What are Sick Leave (paper) requests and Sick Leave (electronic) requests?
Sick leave (paper) request: It is a document which employee's doctor issue after their doctor's visit. We do not approve paper sick notes since 1st October 2025.
Sick leave (electronic) request: Employees use this option to request sick leaves. In these cases, the doctor's office informs the employee that the sick note will automatically be transmitted to the health insurance provider from where we as employees receive information regarding the sick leave. These sick notes are termed electronic sick notes (eAU). The sick leave days are approved only based on this when an employee requests Sick Leave (electronic). These sick leave days take time to be processed considering the time taken for the eAU information to be received by the employer(normally 14 days).
Employees may send online sick notes. These are often approved under doctor Haresh Kumar. This doctor has been confirmed as fake by the State Medical Association. These and any other online sick notes are also to be rejected. Always redirect the employee to send their paper sick notes to their Health insurance which will decide if the sick leave is approved or not.
Can we accept a Liegebescheiningung?
Yes, we accept a Liegebescheinigung as a sick note but we do not approve the absence in the Quinyx. It is important for employee to submit the document to their Health insurance and to request eAU via their WFS App.
What if the employee sends us a sick note for their child?
You can approve a sick note that belongs to their child, HOWEVER make sure to;
Verify that both the child's and the employee's (parent's) surnames match.
Additionally, ensure they share the same home address if the surnames do not match.
If they have different addresses or surnames, kindly ask them for proof of parenthood (a birth certificate should be enough).
We choose “Sick Leave Child Unpaid” as the absence type in Quinyx.
A child sick note looks as follows;
A birth certificate looks as follows;
Note: sick leave for a child can be taken until 12 years old. To explain,
if a child is 11 years old and a parent takes a sick leave to look after them- we approve.
if a child is 13 years old and a parent takes a sick leave to look after them- we deny it.
What if the employee is sick within their first 28 days?
If the employee gets sick within the first 28 days of the employment, they will have to send their sick note (Ausfertigung zur Vorlage bei der Krankenkasse) to their insurance provider directly as they are the ones responsible for paying the employee for those days.
If the employee is a working student or has a mini job contract and gets sick within the first 28 days, neither Flink nor their Health insurance pay for their sick days. Usually, this kind of employee does not pay any contributions for health insurance over the payroll and both types of employment are not meant to be the main occupation. They should have another work (main job) where Sick Leave should be paid for.
A similar process applies if they have a period of more than 6 weeks of continued sick leave. Make use of the sickness calculator (Make your own copy please!)
What about covid?
Positive COVID rapid/PCR test results are not accepted as a sick note.
Only a quarantine certificate from the health authorities or a valid sick note is accepted.
☝ If the employee has COVID-19 within the first 28 days of work, it is Flink's responsibility to pay the employee only if they provide a quarantine certificate. However, if the employee sends a sick note from a doctor it is the health insurance that is responsible for paying the wages.
How about working accidents?
The Workforce Support team do not process the sick leave regarding the accident. We need to forward it to the People OPS team as they are responsible for processing this kind of request.
⚠️ For sick leaves related to work accidents within the first 28 days of employment, please process such cases as a regular sick leave request, choose the absence type; “Accident” and assign to People Ops.
⚠️ Only the day of the accident (full shift) will be covered by Flink; the remaining period will be covered by the company's insurance provider, BGHW.
How is the sick leave calculated?
The calculation of sick pay is based on the average working hours per day. This is calculated by dividing the employee's contractually agreed weekly hours by the number of contractually agreed working days per week.
💫 For example, a full-time employee works 40 hours divided by 5 days a week(40 hours/5 days = 8h per sick day).
The calculation is based on a 5-day work week as stated in their contract. The average method of calculating sick days based on contractual hours gives every employee a fair payment. Sickday payments are not connected to shifts but to the number of working days.
Mini-jobbers and working students should make sure that they are working in line with their contractual working hours. Overstepping these can result in adjustments to their vacation and sick payments. For example, if a WS (12-hour contract) worked for 10 hours and has approved sick days in the same week, they will only receive payment for the remaining 2 hours to fulfil their weekly contractual hours. Note: The hours will be distributed across the sick days. For example, if the employee was sick for two days and worked 10 hours, they will be paid 1 hour per sick day. Same applies to Mini-jobbers. The table below shows how many hours per sick day the employee will be paid for based on their contract type:
If an employee gets sick during their shift. How should we handle such cases?When an employee works for some time and leaves early due to illness, we still set this as electronic sick note and wait for the health insurance provider to approve it.
The duration of the absence should be added from the time of punch-out until the originally planned end of the shift on Quinyx.
Check if the shift has punched hours and add absence.
💡 Alert! Do not change the shift length
The start time is the end of punch +1 min and the end time is the end of the shift.
Select “Sick leave same day punch” as the absence type.
Leave ‘absence schedule’ blank.
Select “keep” for ‘shifts in this period’.
Validate Quinyx view of absence + punched hours.
If the sickness continues, the following days have to be approved as normal sick days.
⚠️ If the employee is within their first 28 days or has had > 6 weeks of sick leave, this does not apply!
What do we do if the employee provides a foreign sick note?
If the employee has approved vacation days but gets sick during their vacation we can approve foreign sick notes. The sick note should still meet the usual criteria.
If the employee provides a foreign sick note but does not have approved vacation days this is a “no-pay”. According to their working contract with the employer (Flink), employees should inform their employer of absence times meaning they need to inform Flink in advance that they will be outside Germany, this is done by requesting and having approved vacation days.
⚠️ If in doubt, if you can accept the sick leave please ask in the collab-payroll-rider-care slack channel
IMPORTANT!! Sick leaves have now been mostly automatised. For more information on how to use the tools, please visit the Sickness Handling- Workforce One SOP.
Manual Approval eAU/ pAU sick leave requests
Zendesk: Click the icon of the "Little man" on Zendesk to check if the employee has sent another ticket with the same request. If yes: Merge the new ticket into the old ticket.
SAP: Check the email address of the employee on SAP to verify the employee's identity. If the email is not found: Use the macro “Not registered email”, choose the correct contact reason, and solve the ticket.
If the paper sick note is provided: reply to the employee using the macro DE>Paper Sick-Note Rejection and modify the text accordingly.
We can always ask the employee to send us a document "Übersicht Ihrer Arbeitsunfähigkeitszeiten seit dem [EnterAffectedMonth]" to speed up the process and approve the sickness without waiting for confirmation from the Health Insurance. This can be done using a macro: [PAYMENT] > EN eAU sick leave corrections.
Quinyx: Go to Schedule, and select the hub on the top right:
Use the “Employee Data” on the right-hand menu to check which hub the employee is assigned to. Copy the “staff id” from here as well:
If you are not able to find the employee in the Hub by searching data from Zendesk, use Quinyx by having 2 tabs open -> People and Schedule. Use the People option to find the employee using their email address. Once identified, use the corresponding Quinyx ID in the schedule to find the employee's schedule.
Click on the sick leave request on Quinyx, double check the dates, and adjust the request if needed. Always check to see if the check box “all day” is selected and make sure to choose the appropriate sick leave type.
Otherwise, we'll approve just a part of the day. Be sure to have a weekly view that reflects the dates of the sick leave.
⚠️ Note: Following a Quinyx update, sick leave requests no longer appear in red as shown below. If there are no requests visible in Quinyx, you can manually add the absence by doing the following: Select the day > Click on the + sign > Add absence > Choose REQUESTED/APPROVED (Electronic sick note) - depending on the case you have. Make sure to adjust start and end dates and save it. ⚠️
Once requested the colour will change;
Go back to your ticket on Zendesk and reply to the employee with [SICKNESS] Notification Received - eAU (electronic) or DE > EN > WFS eAU sicknote submission or [SICKNESS] > EN APPROVAL - eAU online sick notes (depending on the case).
Select an “Assignee” (reassign to DE > (Ext) Workforce Support Ridercare) on the left side tab if the sickness was only requested manually, if it was approved take the ticket for yourself, check the contact reason, choose “stay on the ticket”, submit the ticket as “On Hold/Awaiting third party response” for requested sickness and "Pending/Awaiting employees response" for approved sickness, add an internal note, and submit again:
The ticket is marked as On Hold/ Awaiting Third Party Response to ensure that the ticket is waiting for Health insurances confirmation.
>>>>>>>⚠️ Sick leave eAU requests approved for a month in the past (excluding the current and previous month) will be handled by the tool. Sickness which was approved with the paper sick note from Health Insurance and it was in the past, has to be added to HRT (Absences tab). ⚠️ <<<<<<
Rejecting sick leave requests
Zendesk: Click the icon of the "Little man" on Zendesk to check if the employee sent another ticket with the same request. If yes: Merge the new ticket into the old ticket.
SAP: Check the email address of the employee on SAP to verify the employee's identity. If the email is not found: Use the macro DE >EN > Not registered email address”, choose the correct contact reason, and solve the ticket.
⚠️ In this scenario, if the employee also sent an paper sick note, make sure to check the sick note before replying to the employee so we can let the employee know that we do not accept paper sick notes, but only the one provided directly from their Health insurance.
Read through the ticket and view the sick note which should be attached at the bottom, if the sick note is paper one: reply to the employee using the macro DE>Paper Sick-Note Rejection.
Sickness within the first 28 days
💡 Make a copy of the sickness calculator and calculate if the employee is in fact within the first 28 days.
If everything is in order, apply the same process as accepting a normal sick leave request(both on Zendesk and Quinyx)
Choose absence type: Sick leave <28 days in Quinyx!.
Adjust the data accordingly.
Select the macro DE > EN > Sick within first 28 days in Zendesk, and modify accordingly before solving the ticket.
☝ If a portion of the sick days are within the first 28 days and another portion is after the first 28 days, create 2 entries on Quinyx:
1. The first entry must include the sick days within the first 28 days2. The second entry includes the sick days after the first 28 days.
3. Select “Sickness within 28 days (split)” as a macro in Zendesk, and modify accordingly before solving the ticket.
Note: If employees fall sick within their first 28 days and are employed under a Mini Job or Working Student contract—both of which are not considered primary employment—and since sick pay (Krankengeld) is generally expected to be covered by their main employer, neither the company nor the health insurance provider is responsible for covering the sick days in such cases. Please apply the macro DE > EN > Working Student/Minijober sick within the first 28 days.
Sickness due to an accident
The ticket should be assigned to People Operations.
Quinyx sickness request: "Invalid agreement”
💡 If we can not request/approve a sick leave request because the employee has an invalid agreement, this means some dates do not match. Perhaps the employee was active before the current start date.
In this case, we adjust the start date of their contract, and we should be able to approve the request.
Other reasons could be that the employee is going to be terminated soon or has been working in another Hub. In this case, change Quinyx Hub to the general city in order to find out the exact Hub.
- Sick notes handled after Payroll Cut-off [last day of the calendar month]
💡 All shifts and absences need to be entered into Quinyx before the end of the month in order to be included in that month's pay (at the end of each month all the absences are calculated from Quinyx to be paid). If they are entered after the pay cut, they will be calculated and paid out automatically in the next payroll. Payroll cut-off is the last day of every calendar month.
Zendesk: Click the icon of the "Little man" on Zendesk to check if the employee sent another ticket with the same request. If yes: Merge the new ticket into the old ticket.
SAP: Check the email address of the employee on SAP to verify the employee's identity. If the email is not found: Use the macro “Not registered email”, choose the correct contact reason, and solve the ticket.
- Read through the ticket and view the sick note which should is usually attached at the bottom, and make sure to deny it if it is a paper sick note from the doctor and approve if it is a document from the health insurance.
- Adjust the Quinxy accordingly.
- If the sick leave request is approved, reply to the employee with macro [SICKNESS] Approval (sick note after payroll cut-off), assign the ticket to yourself, check the contact reason & solve the ticket in Zendesk.
- If the sick leave request is rejected, reply to the employee with the macro [SICKNESS] Rejection.
Flowchart
Tools
Zendesk: Receive requests from the employee including AU/ pAU sick notes.
SAP: To verify the employee's details/ email address.
Quinyx: To identify the employee's schedule for the sick leave request or the sick leave days information.
Macros
Macro name | Description |
[SICKNESS] new policy- explanation | The new sickness policy (electronic sick notes) is explained in detail. |
[SICKNESS] Approval - AU in paper form | Approval confirmation of the employee's sickness request and paper sick note. |
[SICKNESS] Approval (sick note after payroll cut-off) | When an employee's sick leave request is after the payroll cut- off, we let the employee know that the sick leave will be in next month's payment. |
[SICKNESS APPROVAL] - eAU online sick notes | Approval confirmation of employee sickness request and electronic sick note. |
DE > EN > Sickness Approval > Accident | Approval confirmation of employee sickness request for an accident. This is handled by People Operations again. |
[SICKNESS] Notification Received - eAU(electronic) | Asking the employee to wait in case of a request for an update on Sick Leave (electronic) request. |
[SICKNESS] Rejection | Sick note is not valid. Different reasons are provided, bear in mind to edit to fit the case. |
DE > EN > Sick longer than 42 days | When an employee has been sick for more than 42 days |
DE > EN > Sick within the first 28 days | When an employee has been sick for less than 28 days |
DE > EN > Sickness within 28 days (split) | Sick leave days approval for sick leave days within the first 28 days + sick leave days after the first 28 days in the same sick leave request. |
[PAYMENT] Sick leave longer than 6 weeks - payment withheld | This macro is for when sick leave pay is withheld as the employee appears to have had sick leave for longer than 6 weeks and we can find the employee on the ‘Unpaid sick leave’ sheet (if the sheet is not available for a month, check with Payroll). |
[PAYMENT] Sick leave payment clarification (no issue) | If there’s no issue with the sick pay, we send this clarification macro. |
[PAYMENT] > EN eAU sick leave corrections | This macro is applied if no feedback is received from the insurance provider after 14 days and the sick leave remains pending. The case will be added to HRT so that Payroll can manually follow up for feedback. |
DE > EN > shift lead sickness | To redirect white-collar employees, particularly shift leads, to the appropriate team, please note that we do not process their sick leave requests. |
Contact reasons
Contact Reason | Description |
Payroll > Payments > Wrong Sick pay | Employee is reaching out because they think they have been paid an incorrect amount for their sick days. |
Operations > Sickness > Notification | Employee wants to request sick leave. |
Operations > Sickness > General Question | Employee has general questions about the sickness policy. |
Operations > Sickness > Payment Question | Employee has questions about the sick pay. |
Operations > Sickness > Shift Question | Employee has a question about the calculation of their shifts when on sick leave. |
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