When Employers Use Sickness Against Expats in Performance Reviews

You worked hard all year. You met your targets and supported your team. Then, you had a setback. Maybe you fell ill with a severe flu, needed surgery, or suffered from burnout due to the high workload. You were absent for two or three months to recover.

Now, it is time for your end-of-year performance review. You sit down with your manager, expecting a fair assessment of the work you actually did. Instead, the rating is low. Your manager tells you that you “missed your targets” or that you were “not visible enough.” They point to your absence as a failure.

This feels incredibly unfair. You were not lazy; you were sick. Penalizing an employee for medical absence is a form of discrimination. Yet, we see this constantly in the Dutch corporate world. If you suspect your employer is using sickness used in performance review NL tactics to deny you a raise or a bonus, you need to know that this is unlawful. Your health is not a performance metric.

How Illness Wrongfully Affects Performance Ratings

The problem usually stems from a lazy calculation. Managers often look at total output without adjusting for time available. If your annual target was to close 10 deals, and you closed 8 because you were sick for two months, you actually performed well. You hit your target for the time you were present.

However, many employers fail to adjust the goals pro-rata. They judge a sick employee against the same yardstick as a healthy colleague who worked 12 full months. They label the result “underperformance.” For an international professional who takes pride in their career, this mislabeling is damaging. It creates a false record in your file that says you are failing, while in reality, you were simply recovering.

Legal Limits on Linking Sickness to Performance

In Dutch employment law, sickness is considered an operational risk for the employer. It is not a fault of the employee. Therefore, you cannot be punished for it.

While an employer can mention in a review that you were absent, they cannot use that absence as the *reason* for a negative assessment. They must judge you based on the quality of the work you performed when you were healthy. Using medical absence as a negative Key Performance Indicator (KPI) violates the principle of good employment practices. If your review states “unsatisfactory” solely because of your medical leave, that review is legally called into question.

Common Employer Tactics

Employers rarely write: “We are giving you a bad score because you were sick.” That would be too obvious. Instead, they disguise the punishment using vague corporate language.

Be aware of these specific tricks:

The Reliability Argument: The manager says you score low on “reliability” or “commitment” because you were not there during a busy period. This frames your illness as a lack of loyalty.
The Bonus Trap: They state that the bonus is strictly tied to “presence.” While some attendance bonuses exist, a performance bonus cannot be slashed to zero arbitrarily just because of legitimate sick leave.
Documentation Manipulation: They start documenting “performance issues” right after you return from sick leave, picking on minor errors to justify the low rating retrospectively.

How This Affects Expats More Severely

For a Dutch employee with a permanent contract, a bad review is annoying but not fatal. For a Highly Skilled Migrant, the stakes are higher.

International contracts are often heavily bonus-driven. A significant part of your total income might depend on that year-end rating. An unfair performance rating expat sick leave decision directly impacts your wallet. Furthermore, if you are on a temporary contract, a negative review is often used as the excuse not to renew your visa-sponsoring contract. Employers use the “performance” excuse to avoid the legal complications of dealing with a sick employee.

Evidence Expats Should Keep

If you feel your review was rigged, you need to prove the link between your sickness and the bad rating.

Collect the following documents:

The Timeline: Create a simple timeline. Show your positive reviews from before you got sick. Then show the negative review that came immediately after your absence. This pattern suggests the sickness is the only changed variable.
The Unadjusted Targets: Save the document showing your original annual goals. If the employer never sent an email lowering these goals during your illness, you have proof they set you up to fail.
Comparison Data: If you know colleagues who performed similarly but were not sick, their success highlights the discrimination against you.

Legal Remedies for Performance Review Abuse

You do not have to sign a performance review that is a lie. You have options to correct the record and claim your money.

Your lawyer can take these steps:

Formal Objection: We can write a formal letter rejecting the performance review. We demand that the rating is adjusted to reflect your actual performance during the months you worked. This prevents the “bad file” (dossieropbouw) from growing.
Claiming the Bonus: If a bonus was withheld due to sickness, we can legally claim it. Courts often rule that a performance bonus must be calculated pro-rata or based on the average of previous years if the employee was unable to influence the outcome due to health.
Blocking Dismissal: If the employer tries to use this bad review to fire you, we can show the court that the “dysfunction” is actually just “sickness.” The court will then block the dismissal.

Immediate Legal Assistance for Unfair Reviews

Did your employer give you a negative rating just because you were ill? Are they using this unfair review to deny your bonus or threaten your position?

This is not standard practice; it is a violation of your rights. Our team specializes in helping international professionals challenge unfair evaluations. We know how to separate medical absence from professional performance.

We can help you immediately to:

Force a correction: We draft the legal objection that forces HR to review the rating.
Secure your bonus: We calculate what you are legally owed and demand payment.
Protect your file: We ensure your personnel file reflects your true skills, protecting your future career steps.