Wednesday, 01 October 2025
09:15 - 16:00
(
6 hours 45 mins )
Online
Join us at our upcoming event in association with Addleshaw Goddard LLP, focused on managing sickness absence. This event provides a valuable opportunity to gain insights, practical strategies, and up-to-date guidance from industry experts who will offer actionable strategies that you can implement immediately within your organisation.
Understand how efficient sickness absence management directly impacts your organisation's bottom line. By attending our event, you'll gain the knowledge and tools necessary to optimise productivity, reduce absenteeism, and drive better performance. We’ll help you use occupational health effectively and implement your organisation’s capability procedures successfully.
This event is designed for employers, HR professionals and those with line-management responsibilities.
This event will help attendees:
Here's what to expect throughout the day.
Get to Know Us: Familiarise yourself with the functions of our online event to ensure you maximise return on your investment. Christine Quinn from Legal Island’s Knowledge Team welcomes delegates to our event.
Kate Field, Legal Director and Robert Dooney, Legal Director, Addleshaw Goddard LLP sets out the legal principles surrounding absence management and provides insights into current absence trends, including:
Includes Q&A with Kate Field & Robert Dooney.
Edel Flynn, Managing Associate, and Alison Devine, Associate, Addleshaw Goddard LLP unravel the complexities of key absence-related cases and highlight the invaluable lessons they hold including disability-related issues and reasonable accommodations.
Edel and Alison will:
Includes Q&A with Edel Flynn and Alison Devine.
Managing sickness absence can be complex and high risk. Clear, well-drafted policies help employers stay on the front foot supporting fair processes, good decisions and legal compliance.
In this practical session, Robert Dooney, Legal Director, and Rachel Kennedy, Associate at Addleshaw Goddard LLP, will share tips on creating effective capability and absence policies, covering:
Ideal for HR professionals and employers looking to strengthen their approach with policies that work in practice, not just on paper.
Includes Q&A with Robert Dooney and Rachel Kennedy.
Effective absence management hinges on strong collaboration between HR and Occupational Health (OH) — but all too often, poor-quality referrals slow things down and lead to unhelpful advice.
In this practical, HR-focused session, Dr Robert Ryan, Specialist Occupational Health Physician and Managing Partner, Medmark Occupational Healthcare will share insights on:
You’ll come away with practical tips to improve communication with OH, strengthen referrals, and make better-informed HR decisions.
Includes Q&A with Dr Robert Ryan.
Kate Field, Legal Director and Philip Gray, Associate, Addleshaw Goddard LLP will walk attendees through a detailed case study based on a long-term absence scenario, drawing together key legal and practical themes covered throughout the day.
Using a step-by-step approach, Kate and Philip will:
The session will offer valuable insights into how to apply the day’s learning to real-world situations, with expert commentary on best practice and risk management.
Includes Q&A with Kate Field and Philip Gray.
This is your chance to put your questions to the Employment team at Addleshaw Goddard LLP and Dr Robert Ryan, Medmark.
Got a tricky question of your own? Come prepared on the day or drop us a line before the event, and we will put it to the experts to answer don't he day – email gosia@legal-island.com
Alison is an Associate in Dispute Resolution and is part of the Employment team. She advises employers and employees on all aspects of the employment relationship, both contentious and non-contentious. Alison represents clients before the Workplace Relations Commission, the Labour Court and the civil courts in employment litigation such as injunctive proceedings, unfair dismissal, equality and discrimination, occupational stress, and health and safety. She also advises on areas such as statutory entitlements, long term sick leave, disciplinary and grievance procedures, investigations and redundancies and conducts contractual and policy reviews.
Robert is a Legal Director and is a senior member of the AG employment law team and part of the wider Disputes Group
Robert has advised a wide range of domestic and international clients in disputes relating to banking and financial services, property and construction, personal injury, medical and professional negligence, commercial contracts, IP infringement, defamation, product liability and sale of goods claims.
He has extensive experience advising and representing employers and employees on all aspects of the employment relationship, including contentious and non-contentious matters. He represents clients before the Workplace Relations Commission, the Labour Court and the civil courts in employment litigation such as unfair dismissal, transfer of undertakings, equality/discrimination, occupational stress, and health & safety.
He regularly provides lectures to students of the Law Society’s Employment Diploma Centre, and he often delivers talks at various events to other practitioners, colleagues, and clients on various aspects of employment law.
Kate is a Legal Director and is a senior member of the AG employment law team and part of the wider Disputes Group. Kate has extensive experience advising employers on all aspects of the employment relationship. This includes both non-contentious and contentious matters.
Kate predominantly advises commercial clients, mainly international organisations, on a full range of employment law issues including workplace investigations, capability issues, unfair dismissal, discrimination, TUPE, senior executive exits, business reorganisation involving redundancy and collective redundancy processes.
Kate has a particular interest in workplace investigations and specifically in advising clients on complex workplace investigations including investigations involving protected disclosures. Kate regularly speaks on employment law topics at firm events and external training events.
Edel has 10 years’ experience advising employers on all aspects of the employment relationship and with respect to equality law, in contentious and non-contentious matters. She handles a multitude of complex and commercially sensitive matters for both international and domestic employers across a variety of sectors. Edel provides practical and commercially focused employment law advice to HR managers and in house counsel to help them navigate through commercially sensitive employment law matters. Edel has been recommended as a “Key Lawyer” by the Legal 500.
Edel has significant experience advising on employment issues arising from internal investigations and processes, whistleblowing allegations, capability, sickness absence, unfair dismissal claims, corporate restructurings and redundancies. Edel has successfully represented employers before the civil courts and the Workplace Relations Commission and also negotiated a number of high profile exits of senior employees. Edel regularly gives employment law presentations at events and training to clients.
Philip is an Associate in the Disputes Group at Addleshaw Goddard (Ireland) LLP and is part of the Employment Group. He primarily advises employers on all aspects of the employment relationship, both contentious and non-contentious. Philip has a particular focus on advising corporate clients on both the buy and sale side on the employment aspects of corporate transactions, including share and asset sales. Philip also works closely with our Insolvency and Restructuring Group in advising insolvency practitioners on the employment considerations in corporate restructurings including liquidations, examinerships and receiverships. Philip has extensive experience advising clients on best practice contractual and policy reviews, as well as regularly advising clients on redundancy, grievance and disciplinary processes. The Employment Group have also been involved in a number of cases involving employment status, protected disclosures and extensive workplace investigations.
Rachel is an Associate in the Employment Team in Addleshaw Goddard. She advises in relation to all aspects of contentious and non-contentious employment and equality law. Rachel reviews contracts of employment, severance agreements, staff handbooks and various policy documents for clients on a regular basis. She also advises clients on disciplinary and grievance procedures, protected disclosure investigations, workplace investigations, working time issues, redundancy processes, long term sick leave and statutory leave entitlements.
Doctor Robert Ryan is a specialist occupational health physician and Managing Partner of Medmark Occupational Healthcare. He qualified in medicine from the Royal College of Surgeons in 1989 and the completed basic specialist training in medicine, before moving to the UK to complete a GP training scheme there. On his return home to Ireland, he joined Medmark and over the past 30 years has worked exclusively in the practice of occupational medicine. He is a Fellow of both the Faculty of Occupational Medicine, and the RCPI and is a recent past Dean of the Faculty.
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