You notify the arbodienst (occupational health service) correctly of leaving while sick (ziek uit dienst) and pregnancy-related illness by passing on the reason ziek uit dienst with the end date and giving pregnancy-related illness its own code or safety-net indication. Both situations fall under the UWV safety net (the Dutch scheme under which the benefits agency covers sick pay), and if the health service does not see that, a case closes too early or the employer misses out on a benefit.
It is precisely in these situations that an absence notification most often arrives wrong. This article describes per situation what goes wrong and what an integration between the HR system and the health service or Visma Verzuim then has to do. Multiple employment contracts are covered too, because they often coincide with leaving while sick.
Why the safety net changes the notification
For most sickness notifications, a first day of sickness and a percentage are enough. In a safety-net situation, the health service and the employer need to know more. The case manager has to see that the safety net comes into play, and the case may not close just because the contract ends.
Not all HR systems record this in the same way. One system has a separate code for pregnancy-related illness, another does not. An international system like Workday does not know the Dutch safety-net scheme at all. The integration fills that gap.
Leaving while sick
A contract ends while the employee is still sick. In healthcare that often happens with an on-call contract. Without extra information, the health service sees only an end date and closes the case.
The integration therefore passes on the reason ziek uit dienst with the end date. The case stays open and moves to safety-net support. Who makes the notification after 42 weeks, we record in advance in the design.
With an on-call worker without fixed hours there is something else. The health service wants to know how many hours of absence are involved. For BlueVi, the absence application of Visma Verzuim, we fill in the hours worked with the average that HR2day knows, or we pass on the pay period from SDB.
Pregnancy-related illness
Pregnancy-related illness gets its own code or safety-net indication. A mapping table converts the value from the HR system to the SIVI code list (the Dutch standard for absence messages) or to the indication in BlueVi.
Two examples where that needs attention:
- YouForce. In Visma Raet YouForce, sickness and maternity leave can be shielded separately. The organisation has to give access to both, otherwise the integration does not see the distinction.
- Workday. Pregnancy and maternity leave are usually a separate leave in Workday. We translate those leave types through a table into the code the health service asks for. With Workday to the health service, we record the safety net in an extra field.
Multiple employment contracts
Someone with two employment contracts can be sick on one and not on the other. Only one absence case may be open per employment contract at a time.
Each employment relationship therefore becomes its own employment contract at the health service or in BlueVi, and the sickness notification goes to the employment relationship on which the employee drops out. If HR records a new sickness case while the previous one is still open, the integration holds the notification and asks HR to close the old case first.
If someone falls ill again within 28 days of recovery, BlueVi does not open a new case. BlueVi adds the notification to the previous one. The integration lets BlueVi make that choice, so the adding-up of sickness periods is correct.
A date that changes afterwards
HR sometimes enters a first day of sickness wrongly, or adjusts it later. Workday allows retroactive entry and usually records sickness per day. The integration merges consecutive days into one absence case and sends a correction if the first day of sickness shifts later.
A correction goes with the old value included. That way the health service knows the earlier notification was incorrect. A new percentage from a certain date is something else: that is a change to the absence itself. How the types of notification differ in the SIVI standard is explained under SIVI absence notification to the health service.
How KoppelHet builds this
KoppelHet builds the absence integration per organisation on its own platform. We record these situations in the design, before the integration goes live:
- which employment relationship becomes which employment contract;
- where the safety-net indication comes from;
- who makes the notification after 42 weeks.
A notification that is not correct is held by the integration with a message to HR. That way no half-sent notification reaches the health service.
Examples: HR2day with Visma Verzuim, SDB with Visma Verzuim and YouForce with Visma Verzuim. The full explanation is on leaving while sick, pregnancy and multiple contracts, and everything about absence integrations on absence reporting via SIVI. If someone leaves, that also affects accounts and access; that is covered under joiner, mover, leaver.