Long term sickness and OH Requests

I have an employee who is approaching 12 months absence. The individual was initially signed off with stress and more recently with depression and anxiety. The trigger according to the individual was an incident in the work place and increased workload. The incident resulted in a grievance brought by the employee and also brought against the employee. Prior to this absence the employee had a good attendance record - only 2 short periods in the preceding 24 months. The employee has 20+ years service. We are currently working through the steps in our Operational Attendance Management Policy, which so far has resulted in a final written warning. To date the employee has attended all meetings, occupational health appointments and also counselling support. As we approach the final stage in our attendance management process I feel it is important to have appropriate and timely advice from OH. My concern is that (at the managers insistence) the individual has already attended 5 OH appointments. It is likely that an appeal will be heard on this case. Could you advise whether further OH requests could/would hamper our process and appear excessive?

• Filed under: absence, Attendance Management, Long Term Sickness, OH requests
• | Post Points: 200

Pgreen,

 

Read your post with interest.

The first thing that struck me was that you are issuing warnings to an individual who clearly has a health problem. Normally an attendance policy would have two strands to it - one that deals with absences in general and has trigger levels, and if breeched then the person moves through the warning system and eventually dimissed if they do not meet the required standard.

The other strand is normally a fitness for work side where you work with the individual and their conditions to ideally get them back to work, either in the same job, or same job reduced hours or a different role, and do this in conjunction with occ health / a doctor.

Seems in your process you are trying to get them back to work, and give them warnings as well and adding to their stress !!!

Also looks like you have a potential PI claim against you for the accident at work, and need to be careful as could face one for Stress as well, which the warnings is not helping.

Think you need to work with your medical support as much as possible, but given its been a year already - you need to try to get them back to work (if can) or think about letting them go.

Adrian

• Filed under: absence
• | Post Points: 70

Pgreen,

   Read your post with Interest.

According to me,as your employee has worked for 20+ years in ur company then he has taken a medical leave for 12 months and after he is physically fit then u should considered him as he is one of the senior employee of your company and if his health is not well then u should leave him.

• | Post Points: 70

Hi Madison,

 

I do agree with you. If anybody spent a long time working with you , Later due to health issue if they required long leave, it shouldn't effect on his/her designation or value to company. Because he/she deserves it. 

• | Post Points: 5

Hi PGreen

Yes it does feel excessive ! You don't say anything about your place of work so it is difficult to judge what is reasonable and what is not.  Putting my usual cynicism aside the manager is right to insist on action for whatever reasons s/he has.  HR is often accused of being too afraid to act but this case seems to require the caution and consideration given so far.  My worry is that OH seems not to be contributing much, hence my feeling that it is becoming excessive.

It is rare for someone to deliberately construct a situation where they are off work for twelve months with the intention of winning compensation (less rare in the public sector because they have more generous sick pay schemes, more so in the private sector because they don't).  We all know that the longer someone is off work with depression the less likely they are to return - sometimes you have to "push" OH by creating opportunities offering your employee a way to come back, even if their manager is reluctant to do so.  If you feel I am correct that everyone has been playing a "hands off, stand back" role then one last push to get the employee back to work should be tried before implementing dismissal procedures.  Threat of dismissal is not a push to come back for employees suffering depression, more a confirmation that you don't want them back.

Pausanias 

• | Post Points: 5

These sort of situations regularly takes places in many organizations. The reorganization and layoffs are done in response to reductions in work, the need to improve processes and steamline procedures, adn to adress budget reducts, these are not directed at individual employees, rather focused on roles, Thus layoffs are not done for performance reasons.  Regardless of whether or not this is your first time initiating or managing an organizational restructuring effort, these guidelines are not a substitute for involving subject-matters experts referenced in each section. In our company HR is our partner in achieving our organizational and operational goals.

 

 

 

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• | Post Points: 5