"Cutting" sick pay for unvaccinated employees - what does this mean?

Ikea has become the latest large employer to publicly announce that sick pay entitlement for those employees that remain unvaccinated, will be “cut”.  However, what is really meant when we discuss the “cutting” of sick pay? 

By law in the UK, eligible employees are entitled to a minimum amount of sick pay entitlement, which is known as Statutory Sick Pay (SSP).  Currently, eligible employees can receive £96.35 per week SSP, if they are too ill to work.  As the name suggests, SSP is a creature of law, and employer’s do not have discretion to “cut” this entitlement for eligible employers, or amend its operation.

As such, when employer’s talk of cutting sick pay as we have seen in recent news, the sick pay referred to in this instance, will be that of “enhanced” sick pay entitlement – entitlement that the particular employer offers to employees at their discretion. This enhanced entitlement will ordinarily be offered to employees through their contract of employment (making the entitlement contractual), or through the operation of a policy document (likely to be non-contractual).  This distinction between contractual and non-contractual will be a significant one in the context of cutting any enhanced entitlement here, as amending contractual rights will almost certainly prove more difficult than amended non-contractual rights. 

It is also worth touching on the very real risk of discrimination when employer’s adopt or consider such a policy of reducing sick pay for a certain category of employees (in this case, unvaccinated individuals).  This is on the basis that some employees may simply not be able to get vaccinated (perhaps due to medical or religious reasons for example).  In such cases, the introduction of a ‘blanket’ policy for all staff, without consideration of any mitigating factors, could result in either direct or indirect discrimination. 

Vaccination in the workplace is of course a very live issue, and one that is bound to see more developments throughout the course of 2022.