AIBU to go off sick over complaint about me at work

Well it is all just a bit crap isn’t it “for legal reasons” and there is no accountability. I am sorry that it affecting your MH but this will be and should be challenged because there are conscientious and professional people that will refuse to be fobbed off, collateral damage of this. If only it could go higher.

Wonder how much this is costing the taxpayer?
Advertising a vacancy when there wasn't one (?), wasting the candidate's time and money-while I wouldn't have taken it to these lengths, they have the right to be annoyed, and having an investigation regarding OP, for (from what you say OP) isn't her fault.

Surely a complaint in this situation is against the employer, not the OP as an individual? Even if the OP was at fault, any complaint brought by the candidate would be against the company?

I agree with this.

What the fuck are they wasting time investigating?!

If you have it all on email, and you have done everything exactly as you're required to, I'd ask go off on paid leave if it's available. No job is worth making yourself sick over, especially a job you have done exactly as you're required to and are still being made to feel awful over. You're feeling like shit because of work policies that you have followed to a tee ... and they're not supporting you!

Going against the grain here. If a hiring manager promised me that I would be provided with feedback if unsuccessful and they inexplicably refused to provide it out of the blue, this would send my anxiety into a frenzy. I would be ruminating about whether I said or did something that sounded terrible or whether someone had spoken about me unfavourably.

Making a formal complaint may not have been the rational response, but perhaps it was driven by exasperation about the current job market. They may have been rejected for numerous roles and desperately wanted to know how to improve. Could you or your employers not have given a vague but reassuring sentence or two about there no longer being a present need for this role due to a change in circumstances?

My advice is to ask your union rep's view about taking some time off.

I'm sure the rep will have told you that you have very little to worry about as you were following instructions from above. I would expect the rep to push management strongly on why you weren't protected from the complainant by HR, as you should have been..

I work in local government and would guarantee that anyone facing this situation in my council would submit a grievance.Prepare all your evidence and submit a grievance, you been thrown under a bus.

Unless you are very junior, snd shouldn't be expected to deal with difficult stuff, pull some resilience out, and crack on.

This is bonkers. I work in recruitment in-house and if we ever have a vacancy pulled during the interview process we advise all candidates that unfortunately due to unforeseen circumstances our recruitment needs have changed and the position is no longer available. I’ve never not been able to give individual feedback off the back of this but given the circumstances in your case, HR should have drafted the wording and any further communication should have been directed to them. Absolutely appalling on their part. You’ve done nothing wrong and they have a duty of care to you during this process. I’d be tempted to take some time once it’s all over if I was you.

I cannot figure out why you are being investigated. The company promised feedback then changed its mind. Someone asked you for feedback which you could not give and you explained this. The candidate complained, but surely the complaint is about the change in company policy rather than you telling them the change in policy?
I do think it would have been wise not to engage in an email exchange after the first reply, given you had nothing to add, but providing you just repeated the policy then I am puzzled that you are so worried about it.

I've been in situations where we decided not to recruit in the end, and whilst that is frustrating for everyone involved, I'd have said very sorry but due to a change in circumstances we are unable to recruit at this time, rather than try and fob people off by saying not possible to give feedback that had previously been promised. Why were you advised not to do that?

It might be worth raising a counter grievance of your own regarding the instructions given, and lack of support after implementing them.

I don’t know why, given the circumstances of the legal case, HR couldn’t provide a standard response to feedback for this. Or why you couldn’t escalate the applicant to HR after they contacted you initially for feedback.

this is absolutely the result of pushing HR responsibilities into individual managers.

sadly you’re going to have to go through the investigation (why isn’t it being handled in accordance with the complaint procedure and rather like a grievance?

your union rep should have your back. This should. Be very easy especially given everything is in writing and you were following directions.

If you are so stressed that you cannot work, taking time off sick is justified. Particularly when the stress is directly caused by the workplace / management.

So you will stay home funded by the tax payer?

My friend works for the NHS and it’s the same there she says. Lots of people getting paid but not working for no real reason.

No idea why HR didn't DO THEIR JOB and intervene in this situation. But not at all an unhinged candidate IMHO - if I went to an interview where I was promised feedback and was then told 'no feedback', I'd be pursuing the case too. Your senior management (and HR) sound like shit. Unless the original discriminatory feedback was down to you, and the hearing is actually about that, you have absolutely nothing to worry about. But then, I quite enjoy a good scrap against morons, and watching them dig themselves into ever deeper holes.

Easy for me to say I know, but I dont know why you are being stressed. You were told what to do. You did it. Thats it. Nothing more to say to any investigation or panel.

Told not to give feedback. Told not to say why you couldnt give feedback. Thats what you did. Thats all there is too it.

It should be water off a ducks back.

Carry on at work and just make sure you have those emails.

I don't understand why you weren't allowed to say the vacancy had been withdrawn. They didn't have to be told there was a legal issue. How odd.

I think it would be entirely reasonable to go off sick. I would be too stressed to work properly. All sympathies to you, what an awful and unreasonable situation to put you in.

OP it sounds as though they are duty bound to ‘investigate’ any time a complaint is made, as some kind of Kafkaesque public sector rigmarole.

I’d be well fucked off with management in your position, as this is a shitty thing to ask you do to do job applicants - even though the one who complained sounds like a nutter. It’s awful enough interviewing for a job that gets pulled, but even worse that they won’t be honest about it.

Going off sick would be a huge mistake.

Why are you worrying about this, you followed instructions, end of.

Hopefully you get full sick pay then :)

Unhinged applicant. Thank heavens they were not hired.

Why didn't HR contact the applicant?

If your level of stress and anxiety means you are worried about your ability to do your job, and is affecting you to the point where your mental health is being severely impacted, you are absolutely not unreasonable to go off sick. You can self-certify for the first 7 days usually but you might feel more secure to get a fit note from the start (from a GP or any other appropriate professional who works at your GP practice - some have a mental health specialist of some other kind, like a nurse, who handles this). And yes the term 'fit note' is weird (the old term 'sick note' seemed to make more sense to me!) but that's just the name they've given it now.

Of course it is often hard to determine what counts as too stressed and anxious to work. This massive area of subjectivity is the reason that we get all these news stories and political debates about where the line should be drawn.

However the best person to determine the level of severity is ultimately you.

Ultimately your managers seem to have directly caused you this stress and anxiety by behaving like dicks - it is frankly shocking that you are being investigated in what seems from the info you've given like a completely clear-cut case of 'not your fault at all'. If you are on the fence about what to do, it would be understandable for this context to push you towards going off sick. Hopefully this won't be the main factor in your decision though. Even if the situation were different (you had genuinely messed up, or your managers were wonderful), it would still be up to you to determine whether you are well enough to work, at least for those self-certification days. People who make big mistakes and people with great managers can also be too stressed and anxious to work.

Good luck - it sounds like a ridiculous and yet deeply horrible situation.

This

Sounds like just following their complaints process, hopefully they’ll soon tell the complainant to fuck off.