By Claudette Groenewald

As an Employer or Manager, you’ve probably noticed that you have a few employees that abuse their sick leave and have the habit of making excuses to not work or perhaps you have come across one or two employees that you suspect are taking advantage of their sick leave allocation, regardless of everyone being entitled to 30 days’ sick leave over a three-year cycle, but since you’re no labour expert, you’re not sure if their medical certificates / sick notes are legitimate or not. All it takes is some Tipex on an old medical certificate and a photocopy machine or between R50.00 – R100.00 in the ‘right’ hands for a completely fraudulent medical certificate / note.

How you can make sure that their medical certificate / sick note is valid.

1. The medical certificate should have a valid practice number.
2. The medical certificate must have the doctor or practitioner’s:

• Initial and Surname.
• Contact number and / or email address.

3. The medical certificate should contain details, including:

• The name and surname of the patient.
• The date and time of the examination.
• A description of the diagnosis / illness in layman’s terms.
• What kind of duties (if any) s/he is able to fulfil as sometimes an employee is advised by the doctor to not carry heavy loads, but they are able to complete admin duties.
• Should the medical practitioner recommend sick leave, the dates should reflect on the medical certificate.

If you are still second guessing yourself, check out our website. With our assistance, you are now able to ensure that all medical certificates received from employees are, in fact, issued by medical practitioners who are registered and qualified to provide medical assistance and to issue medical certificates.

The high level of sick leave fraud currently faced in South Africa, has made it essential to verify medical certificates. Recent studies have shown that more and more employees are providing fraudulent medical certificates to get out of work.

Employees are able to simply purchase a medical certificate from a street vendor and this would not be picked up on by the untrained eye, therefore, a large number of employees are able to get away with providing their employers with fraudulent medical certificates without the fear of being caught.

Verifying medical certificates is one of Searchlight’s specialised services where we confirm the actual information reflecting on the medical certificates as well as verify that the medical practitioner is, in fact, registered and qualified to do so.

This service is unique to our company in that we have an entire department solely focused on doing sick note verifications.

Know What You’re Dealing With – Let Us Assist.

Yours sincerely,

Searchlight Background Screening & Criminal Record Checks