Contents
When it falls due
As soon as employees have been unfit for work for longer than six weeks within a year, continuously or repeatedly. What counts is a rolling period of twelve months, not the calendar year, and all absences count together, including those from different causes.
The duty applies to every employer, regardless of the size of the business and regardless of whether a works council exists. It applies to all employees, not only to severely disabled people.
Voluntary for the employee, mandatory for the business
The employer has to offer the procedure, the person concerned does not have to take part. Without their consent no integration management takes place, and no detriment may arise for them from a refusal.
The offer does, however, have to be complete and comprehensible: it has to name the aims, point out that participation is voluntary, and explain what data will be collected and that consent can be withdrawn at any time.
The consequence of missing integration management
Omitted integration management does not automatically make a dismissal on health grounds ineffective, but it shifts the burden of pleading considerably: the employer then has to show that integration management would not have produced a milder measure either. Making that case is hard in practice.
That is why integration management gets treated as a formality until it matters, and then it is missing.
Common mistake
Only continuous absences get counted. The duty also applies to repeated short illnesses as soon as together they exceed six weeks in the year.
This is not legal advice; for a specific case at your workplace you are better off asking someone qualified to give it.
- Section 167(2) sentence 1 SGB IX
- „Where employees are unfit or partly unfit for work for longer than six weeks within a year, continuously or repeatedly, the employer, together with the competent employee representation within the meaning of section 176 and, in the case of severely disabled people, also with the representative body for severely disabled employees, and with the consent and involvement of the person concerned, establishes how the incapacity can best be overcome, with what benefits or assistance renewed incapacity can be prevented and how the job can be preserved.“
Published by: AMNAU GmbH
Editorial responsibility: Ugur Aydogan, Product development.
Last reviewed: 2 September 2026