If one of your employees is on sick leave due to coronavirus or has been quarantined by the health authorities, you must pay wages in the same way as during normal illness.
This means that if the employee is a “funktionær”, he or she must have his or her usual salary. If your employee is not a “funktionær”, the pay during sickness depends on whether you are covered by a collective agreement or if there is something about pay during sickness in the employee’s contract.
You will receive a refund from day 1
You can usually get sickness benefit reimbursement after 30 calendar days of illness. But if the sick leave is due to coronavirus, you can get sickness reimbursement right from day one. This applies both if the employee is infected with coronavirus and if the employee has been quarantined by the health authorities.
The amendment to the sickness benefit law is retroactive and applies from 27 February. This means that you can seek reimbursement from the first day of sickness for all employees who have been on sick leave from February 27 if the sick leave is due to coronavirus or quarantined. The employee must sign a declaration (tro- og loveerklæring) that this is a coronavirus.
Why an employee must sign a declaration (tro- og loveerklæring)?
The reason why the reimbursement does not require a medical certificate is that this may cause an increased burden on the health authorities. Furthermore, not all infected will be tested. The sick person must therefore, by faith and by law, declare that he or she has a realistic suspicion that there is / was a coronavirus.
Should we send employees home that are not needed in the workplace?
The government has called on private companies to send employees home who can work from home. At the same time, the government has announced that goods must be produced simultaneously in Denmark. It is the company that assesses whether an employee can work full time or part time from home as well as which employees in the company are involved.
Employees have a duty to work from home if possible.
Can I ask my employees to stay home?
If your employee has been on holiday in an area that the authorities advise against traveling to, you may want to consider whether he should stay home for a period of time. For example, you can agree with him that he works from home.
If this is not possible, the employee can leave with pay. This means that he does not have to pay for his absence when the company asks him to stay home.
What should I do if my employee falls ill on holiday?
Here again, the general rules of sickness and vacation apply. This means that if the employee falls ill before the holiday begins, he has no obligation to begin the holiday. Instead, he may ask to hold the holiday at another time.
If the employee becomes ill during his vacation, he is entitled to a compensation holiday after 5 sick days if he has earned a total of 25 days paid vacation. If the employee has earned less than 25 days’ holiday, he is entitled to a vacation holiday after a proportionately smaller number of sick days.
The employee will be entitled to a compensation holiday from the day he reported the illness to you. If you want medical documentation for the illness, it is the employee who has to pay for it.