If you're a manager, what do you honestly think of staff going off on mental health sickness?

I feel very strongly about this. I’d caution those who think these people “lack resilience”… I used to think like that, and then it happened to me. In my opinion, there is great resilience and strength in recognising that you need to step back and put your health first.

I’m a manager now and I’m actually grateful that I have experienced what I have, it’s made me much less judgmental, and much more empathetic.
In terms of the impact on other employees, more managers need to get their arse up and get their hands dirty. Or at least be open enough that your employees feel comfortable enough to approach you with their concerns.

In my old job (before I was a manager), we had 4 people on long-term sick, and I started to really struggle balancing the massive workload with my own out-of-work issues. I asked my line manager if I could have a word with her (I’d quite obviously just been crying) and was told “no, not the right time. I’m buying new folders today.”
She left the office and came back 4 hours later with the folders (fair enough), and enough Topshop bags to fill a warehouse. And she had the nerve to question why I said “staff feel unsupported” in my exit interview…

We had a young woman off for 8 months last year, and I heard a “joke” made about how “bloody younguns can’t cope with anything these days. Probably off getting her nails done.”. They had absolutely no idea why she was off. Obviously, I did, and the poor woman had 3 traumatic events happen in close succession and kept it bottled up for months and months. Until her breaking point, you’d have had absolutely no idea what had happened to her and her family. Best believe I made a big point of not accepting those comments.

Her absence actually changed a lot about our workplace. It made me worry that I wasn’t doing enough to try and help my employees.
Managed to get rid of some work that took up quite a hefty chunk of time, that upon examination, was actually quite unnecessary. Frees up my time to be more hands-on.
Flexible/condensed hours introduced; monthly check-ins with all staff; all staff entitled to one “I really can’t be arsed” day a month. Officially, it’s called a “free day”, but they can call me in the morning and ask to use it that day. No reason needs to be given, no questions asked. Nobody’s actually used theirs yet which I’m surprised about 😂

I think it’s a real thing and that if the employee ‘pushes on’ out of fear about how their employer will respond it generally makes the situation far worse- both in terms of mental health & physical health. I have experience in my team of a person concealing stress, not taking time off, out of shame/guilt/duty, and the result being quite serious physical illness that could have been avoided. Mind and body are connected.

Not even to touch on the the various legal consequences of an employer refusing to recognise mental health problems!

That page is out of date then as the 1st treatment for migraine is a 900mg dose of aspirin now (along with drugs like sumatriptan) not paracetamol or ibuprofen as the aspirin helps thin the blood and migraines are now believed to be triggered by lack of blood flow and they help the migraine meds which are generally vasodilators to work better

Obviously 🙄

I manage someone who has severe depression, bipolar, is known to be suicidal. There are periods they are off work for weeks at a time. They are on very strong medication. When in work, they’re zoned out, their eyes are blank like there’s nobody behind them. How can you say that everyone with severe MH issues should want to be keeping busy just like you? How come so many people can’t?

It's awful isn't it how mental illness is being weaponised by the shirkers. This is why no matter how bad I feel (suicidal at points , I pray I never experience those feelings again ) I've never ever been sick from work because of it and have never told anybody. People like this shirkers have now adopted "mental health" and demonised it for the real sufferers (so we all stay quiet)

Well done. You got your controversial, goady comment in first 👏

It’s very common place in my team - social work.
I think or certainly get the impression that managers are accepting and understanding because there is a high burn out rate and they need happy healthy staff.

That sounds terrifying for you and completely debilitating. I'm sorry you went through that. I hope you're in a much better place now.

I’ve worked with people who were genuinely suffering from MH problems, and I’ve worked with people who were patently lazy shysters leaning on MH as a reason to not do a job but keep the job. In my experience the second group is bigger than the first.

The usual way to deal with sickness game-players is to make them redundant from a pool using a package of criteria, to minimise the chances of a tribunal claim for disability discrimination.

Im finding more and more people are going off citing normal and common life stresses as MH, anxiety etc.

Latest one is someone off for 6 weeks with anxiety because I flagged up they made a mistake that cost the business £5k and I arranged for more training on the system. Apparantly this has triggered "severe anxiety" even though I didnt even bollock them as £5k was small fry in terms of the project cost.

Not impressed at all and red flag is up and ill be taking the first opportunity to manage them out.

So it depends for me what the issue is.

I’ve been both the manager with team members off with MH issues and the employee off as a result of burnt out/anxiety/depression. I’ve also been in a small team with a colleague off sick regularly due to their MH. My day job currently is for a trade union and I have a huge number of cases supporting members absent or struggling at work due to MH issues. So seen this from lots of perspectives.

Being open and honest about what the issues are, whether they are work related or personal is so important to getting support at work. And always better to be off and take time to get well and ready to return to work and maintain being at work, than have lots of short term absences. In my experience (both public and private sector) employers are more likely to be sympathetic to long term absence.

Take your time to get well @CarrotCrusader

I'm a social work manager so MH related and workplace stress absence is relatively common. Every SW in my team who has had to take MH related leave has had major issues going on at home at the same time and this has led to them not functioning at work - they have nothing but my support. Having said that there are a very small number of social workers who take MH related sick leave simply because the demands of the job are too much. The MH impacts are real, but the issue is the worker's unsuitedness to the work. Those workers are a headache and a PITA and nobody is very sympathetic if I'm completely (and anonymously) honest. If the work makes you ill, do something else.

I did c. 30 years as an over achiever, reliable and hardworking. Then what felt like overnight I lost all motivation. I hated it. I just couldn't make myself care about work or perform well in a role I didn't care about.

I changed my job believing that to be the problem, but it was no better. Eventually I decided to retire, but I do think now maybe I should have treated it as a mental health problem and taken some time off.

Edited to add the point I originally intended to make! I guess I will have appeared workshy to collegues, I had no "reason" for being unwell, but there was physically and mentally nothing I could do about it. Now I'm retired I still have the same difficulties getting anything done, but it only affects me now. TBH I think Im burnt out.

Please tell me you are not really a manager.

That’s awful

No different to any physical health condition.

If you'd rather be busy and you can work then your point is moot.

If you have a serious mental health issue then you likely can't work it's nothing to do with toxic work colleagues and it's not like a cold you can get over in a day, or a touch of the blues that keeping busy will see you through.

Youve obviously never had severe mental health issues.

Having gone off with mental ill health myself I would be empathetic and understanding

The team should be told that x is off, the expected duration and how work will be reallocated. They shouldn’t be told that Anne is off to adjust to new medication for her bipolar disorder anymore than they’d be told that Sally has an infected cyst on her vulva. A team can function perfectly well without knowing the confidential details of the other members’ health and any manager divulging it could be rightly disciplined!

The NHS website literally defines a migraine as a really bad headache and advises you to take paracetamol or ibuprofen. I’m sure you know there are different types of migraines, some range from lasting a couple of hours to a couple of days.

But you know exactly what I meant by using this as a loose example, which was used to show that you can’t judge someone’s illness by your own biased perception. Kind of what you’ve done here tbh.

That’s sort of the issue though. Someone with the flu may take a few days, someone with a note for mental health could take a few months or longer, and the only “proof” you could ever ask for they can easily get, they just pop into the GP and ask for their note to be extended. How easy it is to get a sick note is a symptom really of how much the NHS is struggling, particularly regarding MH, huge waiting lists for talking therapy/actual help so a sick note/antidepressants are the quick hit the GP can just pass out.

Horrible horrible post.

One in four suffer mental health issues in UK every year, and Britain is 2nd lowest in terms of mental health.

How can anyone be so ignorant?

I was a manager for nearly 3 years. I was really supportive of those struggling with their mental health, less so with those who played the system and had frequent short term sickness for vague reasons.

I’m NHS so sickness management policy is really quite poor to navigate as a manager for those who know how to play the system and it creates so much work!

I had 6 weeks leave when my dbro died and my team were really supportive of that. My manager less so but that wasn’t unexpected and I’d already handed in my notice because of a lack of support.

Yes they did 😡 and I got rid of both of them asap.
But the staff who are genuinely ill always got all the support they needed to get them back to work and in a role that doesn't impact their MH. Its the piss takers who get the sack