I have an employee who reported sick,but was then not heard from for 10 days. All attempts to contact him failed so I wrote a letter asking him to contact me asap, and to produce a certificate so that he could be paid sick pay. He still did not contact me but arrived at his place of work with a certificate dated after my letter, saying he could return to work.
I should say that he already has a written warning on file for failure to attend work at New Year. He did not contact us then either. So, instead of returning to work he was invited to attend a disciplinary hearing the following week.
However, the day before the hearing he was admitted to hospital with a serious infection which required an operation. This illness is obviously genuine and the most important thing at the moment is his recovery.I have told him this on the phone. But the issue will not go away and is still quite serious as his line manager has stressed his return will have a negative effect on the rest of the team.

Any advice on how to proceed?

PS- I still had to push him to produce a certificate even for this!
fiona fritz