Off sick? Phone your boss — texting or emailing must end, says work tsar

Sir Charlie Mayfield, the former John Lewis boss leading the government’s Keep Britain Working review, has said employees “calling in” sick by text, email or WhatsApp must end — staff should be required to phone their manager instead.

“It’s very important that you’re immediately establishing a contact, a dialogue, between the employer and the employee,” he told The Times. “So you can’t just text, send a WhatsApp, or send an email. You’ve actually got to ring somebody up.”

He added: “We’re saying that we should change the norm so that it’s almost never the case that you should be allowed to be off sick without being in contact with your employer.”

Mayfield said employers and employees alike were “afraid to have conversations about sickness”, with managers in some firms advised not to contact staff who are off sick for fear of a complaint, grievance or employment tribunal.

He also said the GP “fit note” system was “not working”, with GPs under “really awful pressure” from patients, and argued that wiring the note as the gateway to sick pay or benefits had turned it into a hurdle people simply had to clear.

The review found the proportion of people required to look for work as a condition of receiving universal credit who have been claiming for a year or more has doubled since the pandemic. Someone who becomes economically inactive for health reasons has just a 3.8 per cent chance of going back to work within the year.

Sources

• The Times, “‘Calling in’ sick with a text or email must end, says work tsar” (23 September 2026): https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/force-sick-employees-to-call-their-managers-says-ex-john-lewis-boss-5csz3vtt2

• BBC News, “Off sick? You need to phone your boss, back-to-work tsar says” (23 September 2026): https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cq0lry248y2zo