When hotel staff bring a sick note: SGK approval, pay and the rota

A sick note (rapor) is a rest report from a doctor or health board authorised by SGK, the Social Security Institution of Türkiye. The hotel does not approve the medical judgement: it declares electronically whether the person worked during the rest period, by the filing deadline for the month in which the rest period ends. SGK pays the allowance from day three of sickness, provided the employee meets the premium condition.

A cook hands in a three-day report at nine on a Friday morning. The kitchen has no cover for dinner service, and payroll has a declaration to file in SGK's system whose deadline follows the month's premium document, not the day the note arrived. Employer sick leave rules in Türkiye are mostly a routine, not a judgement call. After reading this you will know what the hotel's step actually is, who pays which days, how the rota absorbs the absence and where the legal limits sit.

What counts as a sick note (rapor), and who may issue one?#

A sick note is a rest report issued by a doctor or a health board that SGK is authorised to accept. It starts a period in which the person is unfit for work.

The report is a medical statement about fitness for work, not a leave request. The hotel's annual leave rules do not govern it, and the person does not need the hotel's permission to be ill.

SGK's condition for paying the allowance is a report from a doctor or health board authorised by SGK, under Article 18 of Law No. 5510 and Article 40 of the Social Insurance Procedures Regulation (opens in a new tab). A note from a source SGK does not accept does not meet that condition, whatever the hotel thinks of it.

The report carries a start date and an end date. Those two dates, not the diagnosis, are what the rota, the time sheet and the payroll declaration actually need. The employer is not the judge of whether the report is genuine: that belongs to the issuer and to SGK. If a hotel suspects misuse, the route is its legal adviser, not a refusal at the front desk.

The document is health data. Treat it as restricted from the moment it is handed in, not after someone remembers.

What is the employer's step in SGK's system, and when is it due?#

The hotel must report electronically, in the way SGK sets, whether the employee worked during the rest period. The deadline is the filing period of the monthly premium and service document for the month in which the rest period ends.

It is a declaration of fact, worked or did not work, not an approval of the doctor's decision. Calling it approval is what makes hotels late: they wait to be convinced by a document that was never addressed to them. The deadline follows the payroll calendar, not the day the note arrived, so a rest period ending in March is settled with March's filing period.

A missing or late notice of not working draws an administrative fine under Law 5510 Art. 102(1)(i). If the person worked part of the period, say so: the declaration is about days, not about the person.

Fix the handover on day one. The department head confirms the dates in writing, payroll files, and one named person owns the step. Keep the report and the date it was handed in with the file, so the declaration can be defended months later.

Who pays during a report: SGK or the hotel?#

SGK pays a temporary incapacity allowance (geçici iş göremezlik ödeneği) for sickness from the third day of incapacity, once two conditions are met. No wage accrues for the time the worker cannot work because the contract is suspended.

The two conditions are an SGK-authorised rest report, and at least 90 days of short-term insurance premiums reported in the year before the incapacity began. For a work accident or occupational disease, the allowance covers every day of incapacity, not from the third day.

The amount is half the daily earnings for inpatient treatment and two-thirds for outpatient treatment. SGK is authorised to pay within seven working days after the documents or information reach it. For rest periods longer than ten days, each payment covers at least ten days.

The first two days of a sickness carry no allowance. Whether the hotel pays anything for them is a contract question, not a social security one. A contract or collective agreement may promise more than the law, so read it before payroll answers the employee's question, because the answer the person remembers is the one given at the desk.

How does a report land on the rota and the time sheet?#

The days go on the time sheet as report days with the document behind them, and the shifts are covered like any other planned absence: decided on the day, not on the day of the service.

The department head needs two things from the report: the dates, and any restriction the doctor states. Nothing else, and nothing about the diagnosis. On the time sheet, mark the days as report days: not as annual leave, not as unexplained absence. The document exists, and the payroll declaration depends on those exact dates.

A cover order that works in a hotel: move a shift inside the week, use a multi-skilled member of the team, ask for voluntary overtime, then look outside. Agree the order before the season, not at four in the afternoon. For night shifts and weekends, name a deputy before the shift starts: a report handed in on Friday afternoon is a weekend problem, and the weekend is where cover fails. This sits inside the wider routine of hotel shift planning that covers the desk, floors and nights fairly.

Handing over the section, the mise en place, keys, cash float and guest requests in progress, is a separate checklist from covering the shift. And plan for an extension: reports are often extended, so re-check the end date each morning instead of rebuilding the week from scratch.

Seasonal contracts, lojman and the end of the season#

A fixed-term seasonal contract still suspends while the person is on a report, but the season end date, the staff room and the meals do not resolve themselves. Each is a clause to check, not a rule to assume.

Whether a report pushes the contract's end date is a contract question. Read the end-date clause and ask the adviser before promising anything to the employee. The same logic applies to the lojman, the staff housing many seasonal hotels provide: the house rules should say what happens to the room while the contract is suspended, and if they are silent, decide before the season, not in the middle of it. The rules around staff housing at a seasonal hotel: rooms, house rules and safety in the lojman are worth settling alongside the contract itself.

Meals, the service bus and similar benefits are contract terms, and a suspended contract is exactly where silence turns into a dispute. Keep the season-end declaration and the report days already declared in one file, so the two records agree when the season closes. And when hiring, the seasonal contract should say how a report is handed in and to whom, so the first report of the season is not also the first conversation about reports. The wider entry routine is covered in hiring seasonal staff: contracts, social security entry and the end of the season.

May a hotel end the contract during or after a report?#

Only in the cases the Labour Law lists, and the notice period arithmetic decides when the right arises. A report on its own is not a ground for termination.

Article 25(I)(a) of Labour Law No. 4857 (opens in a new tab) applies when the illness or disability is caused by the worker's own intent, disorderly life or addiction to drink, and the resulting absence lasts more than three consecutive working days or more than five working days in a month. Article 25(I)(b) applies when a health board finds that the illness cannot be cured and that it is inadvisable for the worker to keep working at the workplace.

For illness and similar cases outside (a), the right to terminate without notice arises only once the absence exceeds the worker's Article 17 notice period by six weeks. For birth and pregnancy, the six weeks run from the end of the Article 74 leave. The Article 17 notice periods are two weeks for service under six months, four weeks for six months to one and a half years, six weeks for one and a half to three years, and eight weeks above three years. They are minimums, and a contract may set longer.

No wage accrues for the time the worker cannot work because the contract is suspended. Document every absence date as it happens: the arithmetic is only as good as the record, and a reconstructed calendar is worth little in a dispute.

Repeated reports: what may a manager ask, and what stays private?#

A manager may ask about the dates and about any restriction on the work. The diagnosis is health data, a special category under Article 6 of the Personal Data Protection Law, KVKK (opens in a new tab), and it stays out of department notes and group chats.

KVKK Art. 6 treats data on a person's health as a special category of personal data: processing is prohibited except in the cases the law lists, such as the person's explicit consent. What the department needs is the dates and any work restriction the doctor states. What it does not need is the diagnosis, the medication or the hospital.

The rota comment, the handover note and the department group chat are all processing. Keep the report itself in a restricted file, not in a folder the whole office can open. Repeated short reports are a pattern to discuss with the person, with HR and with the adviser: the pattern is about attendance and cover, not about guessing a condition. If the hotel needs to know whether the person can do the job, that is a fitness-for-work question for the doctor, not for the department head.

What to do next#

Run the next report that arrives through four steps in one morning: dates onto the rota, cover named, dates to payroll, declaration filed with the month's premium and service document. Then put the three quiet questions in writing before the season starts: the seasonal contract's end date, the lojman rule for a suspended contract, and the one-line confidentiality rule for the department. Confirm dates, penalties and your own case with an accountant or legal adviser.