Ill During Your Probation Period

Are you allowed to be ill during probation?

Yes. For reporting sick, the same rules apply during probation as at any other time: you notify your employer without delay, state the expected duration and present the medical certificate. There is no special rule that forbids you to be ill in the first few months.

What differs is not the sick report but protection against dismissal. That is where the uneasy feeling most people have in this situation comes from.

Do you get continued pay during probation?

After the first four weeks of the employment relationship, yes, and then quite normally for up to six weeks. If you fall ill earlier, the employer does not pay yet. People with statutory insurance receive sick pay from their health insurer during that time.

The four weeks count from the agreed start of the employment relationship, not from the first day worked. So someone who starts on the first and falls ill on the 29th already has the entitlement.

Can you be dismissed because of a sick note?

During probation you can be dismissed with two weeks' notice, and general protection against dismissal only applies after six months. That means your employer needs no reason for a dismissal during this time, and a sick note does not protect you from it.

One point is safeguarded by law, though: if your employer dismisses you precisely because of your incapacity for work, your entitlement to continued pay remains, even beyond the end of the employment relationship and up to the full six weeks.

What actually helps you is a clean process: report in on time, present the proof within the deadline, stay reachable. A properly issued certificate is considerably harder to question than one where the date or the sequence raises questions.

Do you have to say what is wrong with you?

No. You state that you are unable to work and how long it is likely to last. The diagnosis is none of your employer's business, and it does not appear on the certificate they receive.

There is only one exception: if your illness poses a danger to others at work, for example with certain infectious diseases in food processing or in care.

From when does the certificate have to be presented?

By law at the latest on the working day following the third day of illness. Your employer may ask for it earlier, even from the first day, and during probation in particular many companies make use of that. A look at the employment contract settles it in two minutes.

Stick to the deadline required, even if it is shorter than the statutory one. Anyone who brings the proof late risks payment being withheld for the time being.

What do you do if you cannot get an appointment?

If your family practice can be reached and has an appointment, that is always the first route. If you cannot get one, the video consultation remains: you choose an appointment online and speak by video to a doctor licensed in Germany.

If incapacity for work is medically justifiable, you receive the certificate as a PDF; the doctor sets the duration individually, and a backdated start is possible. The consultation usually costs €49.99 and is billed privately under the German scale of fees for doctors.

With warning signs such as shortness of breath, chest pain or sudden severe pain, by contrast, the examination belongs in a practice or an emergency department, not in a video consultation.