If you are able to perform some work, you will be placed on partial sick leave. The intention is to maintain your connection with your workplace and use your remaining capacity for work, but only if it medically safe for you to do so.

The sick leave can be graded down to 20 percent. If you have multiple jobs, you need to be on sick leave from at least 20 percent of your total workload. Periods of partial sick leave count as part of your sick leave period, which is maximum 52 weeks. This means the sick leave period is always the same; it does not matter if you are on full or partial sick leave.

There are two ways to be on partial sick leave:

• You can work fewer hours than normal, with fewer responsibilities.
• You can take longer to handle your normal responsibilities.

If you are able to work more than what is indicated by your partial sick leave, you can. When you submit your application for sickness benefit, you must specify all the hours you worked. Your sickness benefit is calculated based on how much you work.

In order to qualify for sick leave for individual treatment days, you can’t work before or after treatment, to ensure that your treatment is effective. You must be healthy enough to be able to work on days you are not receiving treatment. This arrangement grants one treatment day per week. If you need more than one treatment day per week, you should ask for a partial sick leave instead.

You don’t qualify for sick leave for individual treatment days if

• you can work before or after your treatment
• your absence is caused by spending most of the day travelling to and from treatment
• you are participating in education or training

You will be granted full sick leave for your treatment day.

Your employer will pay sick pay for your first 12 treatment days. After that, you will receive sickness benefit from Nav.

Reserved sick leave is a notice to your employer that you can avoid sick leave if your work is adapted for you.

Reserved sick leave is used during the employer liability period, i.e. the first 16 days of your absence, when your employer pays your sick leave.

Avoid sick leave with adaptations

In order to qualify for reserved sick leave, you need to meet the sick leave requirements, and it has to be medically safe for you to work some. The person issuing your medical certificate will assess this.

If workplace adaptations are not possible, and you become completely absent from work, the person who issued your medical certificate must issue a medical certificate for ordinary sick leave if your employer requests it. Your employer should inform the person issuing the medical certificate why it is not possible to make adaptations. Your employer can include this in the follow-up plan (in norwegian) and share this plan with the person issuing the medical certificate.

The new ordinary sick leave will then apply from the date on which the notice of reserved sick leave was issued.

The days of reserved sick leave will not count as part of the employer liability period if adaptations made it possible for you to work fully.

You are responsible for seeking medical help and document your inability to work with a medical certificate. The main rule is that Nav will not accept a medical certificate for a time period before you were assessed by a doctor. There are some exceptions from this rule, but these are limited. One example is that it was not possible to get a doctor’s appointment sooner. If so, the doctor will assess your situation and specify in the medical certificate that your sickness absence started earlier.