Electronic sick leave certificates: a guideline for an employer

LEGAL DIGEST \ 20.11.2018

Electronic sick leave certificates have been used in Russia for over a year now. Nevertheless, employers have encountered difficulties in registering at the website of the Social Security Fund. We have gathered statistics and comments from officials about the updating of the system, and have concluded that the service has been improved and is now more user-friendly.

According to the data at the end of October, electronic sick leave certificates can be obtained in 6,500 medical institutions across Russia (54.54% of the total number of medical institutions). The number of companies accepting electronic sick leave certificates from their employees comes to over 138,000 (19.15% of the total number of insurance companies). These companies employ over 42% of insured employees. Over 3.3 million electronic sick leave certificates have been issued over the period from 1 July 2017 to date. Electronic sick leave certificates are in demand not only by large and medium-sized companies, but by small business as well. The share of electronic sick leave certificates that were obtained by small businesses accounts for 24.5% of the total amount.

Thus, a medical institution today may issue an electronic sick leave certificate at the request of an employee and subject to his/her consent in writing. This, however, requires the employer also to connect to the information exchange system. To do this, a company can use its personal account of an insured person on the Social Security Fund’s website or can use specially configured software (proprietary software, or software developed by third party companies, such as 1C, Tenzor (SBIS), CKB Kontur, or Taxcom).

For an electronic sick leave certificate to be used, the following steps should be taken:

• An employee advises his/her employer of the electronic sick leave certificate and its number;
• The employer requests data from the Social Security Fund using the information exchange method (by using the employee’s personal pension account number (referred to in Russian as ‘SNILS’) and the number of the electronic sick leave certificate);

Then, depending on the payment mechanism being used, the employer will do the following:

• If an offset method is used to pay sick leave, it will supplement the electronic sick leave certificate with the necessary information and submit the updated data, bearing a digital signature, to the Social Security Fund, and assess and pay allowances;
• If a direct payment method is used, it will fill in the register containing data regarding allowances, sign it with a digital signature and submit that data to the Social Security Fund.

If you have any questions as to how electronic sick leave certificates can be used, please contact Acsour’s specialists.