Sickness Disciplinary

[PlankJ]

A friend has been called to a discplinary and been advised it could lead to dismissal, she does have high levels of sick (2 periods due to operations) and a bout of various days until they diagnosed her with IBS, and a car accident in which she suffered whiplash.
I have advised her that the 'honesty' of her absence is not the issue she has contract and there is a policy and she has what they consider high levels. She works in a high pressured sales environment where figures & sales dominate and if your not there your not earning!
My question is in the meeting what does she have to do....they are aware of the reasons for her sickness - what can she do to attempt to avoid dismissal - what can she do to prepare she knows why she was sick she can offer them promises that the issues are now behind her.....she has medication for the IBS, the operations were one off and hope fully she won't have a car accident again but is there anythign else she can do apart from appeal to their good nature.......

[buildersmate]

The critical thing to talk to her about is to think about it from the employer's viewpoint.
If they want to consider dismissal, they have to do it fairly - and that means following a fair process. So that means interviewing her, asking her side of the situation, agreeing (if appropriate) and improvement plan and then monitoring against the plan.
I believe that she should therefore be talking about that the worst is behind her, that she is committed to the job and the company. They will probably want to set a minimum standard of attendance (no. of occasions off / total no. of days) - she could try mitigating it as far as reasonable.
At least that buys time.
The standards set should be appropriate to the circumstances and the policies of the company - the company has to show under a fair process that everyone gets treated in the broadly same way.
Then she has to seek to stick to it.

[PlankJ]

Thanks that helps, unfortunately I think she had had some informal and documented chats about it prior to the accident and the appendix operation and I think they had advised her basically she was being watched and no more sick......and then 2 completely unavoidable incidents have now tipped her over the edge with them......But I will pass on your advice and hopefully she can convince them that she isn't a liability......to make it worse it is quite a new role too so doesn't have much historical data to go on.

[buildersmate]

If she has not received a written warning so far, it starts to sound pretty unreasonable to dismiss someone (with notice) as the first formal step.
However has she been there at least 12 months? - thus gaining rights in terms of unfair dismissal.

[PlankJ]

All OK, she talked at length about how much she loved her job, it was all behind her and she was given a verbal warning and a target of no cikness for 6 months and then a review. She is happy and hoepfully her run of bad luck is behind her. Thanks