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Create and share a return to work form

How to use Sage HR to provide a return to work form to employees who have been on sick leave.

Written by Oliver Cook

When an employee returns after sickness absence, some companies arrange a return-to-work interview and form. Sage HR can automate this process.

Using the documents feature in Sage HR, you can share a blank return‑to‑work form for employees to download and use when needed. You can then use the recipes feature to automate prompting employees to complete this form when they return from their leave.

Step 1 - Create your form

You can create this using Word, Google Docs, or similar software. Ensure it includes the required information, and you've saved it in an editable format.

📌TIP: We recommend saving it as a .docx rather than a .pdf. For example, your employees may not be able to add their details to a pdf.

Step 2 - Upload the form to Sage HR

You need to upload the form to Sage HR as a document. When you upload the document, you need to share it with everyone.

You can share the document in the General category or create a dedicated category beforehand for this type of form

Below are some articles to help you with this process:

Step 3 - Set up a recipe to alert a manager

You can set up a recipe to alert managers about an employee returning from sick leave.

When building the recipe:

  1. Enter a name that makes it clear this is for return to work.

  2. Under When this happens select Employee has returned from time off.

  3. Under Do this action... select Send email to Direct manager with a custom condition of if employee is on [your sick leave policy].
    ​
    You can choose to send an email to the employee, their manager, a specific person, or an email address. Alternatively, you can also send a task instead of an email.

    📌TIP: If you have more than one sick leave policy, create a duplicate of the recipe, then use the other policy.

  4. Enter an appropriate email subject.

  5. Enter the Email content. You can use the variables at the bottom of the screen to personalise the message.

Step 4 - Upload the completed return to work form

Once an employee completes the return to work form, save it to your computer.

You can upload this completed form against the profile of the employee who was absent. Alternatively, if you have the sick policy set to allow attachments, you can upload it against the time off request itself. To upload the completed form against the time off request.

Add an attachment to a time off request

  1. When editing the employee's time off request, under Attachment, click Select file

  2. Browse to the completed return to work form, select it and click Open.

  3. Click Submit to save the changes.

You can access time off attachments via Documents on the main menu, then within the Time off requests category.

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