Working with someone with a chronic illness

[thatsalliknowsofar]

If you work with someone with a chronic illness which can affect their work - fatigue, more days off sick, time off for hospital appointments would you be annoyed and feel as if they are a waste of a colleague?

And the law says that all employees should respect these adjustments

God the ignorance and disablism on this thread is appalling

@JenniferAlisonPhilipaSue I did not read @godmum56 comment as being ableist. Absolutely all employees need to respect the adjustments, and hopefully each other, and calling or regarding a colleague as a waste is disgusting.
But, as I am sure you know, the adjustments must not disadvantage other employees .
It is not acceptable for management to make adjustments in absence of considering the effects on the organisation AND to mitigate those.

What were your managers doing?

I mean if that colleague was only able to do half of thw ork, it must have shown, right?
And when they did their yearly performance review, they never mentioned it for 10 years? They accepted that?
Can you not see that the issue ins't your colleague who tried their best but the way your manager handled the situation? They basically ignored it which NEVER works. They should have impleented some adjustements for them and then review.
Said colleague should not have been left thinking they were still doing a job good enough wo any changes in the first place. The managers should not have left others picking up the pieces. And tbh, you shouldn't have taken up so much more work that it makde your worload unmanageable either (did that not come out in your yearly review either?). Regardless of whether they were in 'denial or not' (fwiw accepting that you are Chronically ill is extremelly hard and most people ARE in denial by default, assumong they can do more than they actually can. That's not them 'not being good enoiugh'. It's them trying their best at carrying living their life as it was).

@JenniferAlisonPhilipaSue I didn't read that as ableist either.

It's not OK to expevt other colleagues to just pick up the slack wo anything els ein place to support them.
And it's not OK to piut in place a system where some colleagues end up over worked and burnt out because of the workload.

So basically giving adjustement like you can work from home/different hours than others/<insert list of adjustements> is OK.
Just dumping half of someone's workload on someone else and epxecting them to just do it wo batting an eye lid isn't.

I job share with someone who has a chronic health condition. She has currently been off since February.

She takes several weeks off per year. Sometimes months at a time like she has done at present.

It's a public sector role. There aren't the funds to get in a temp to cover her.

Even when she is in work she slacks off, picks up less, refuses to do certain tasks citing her health needs.

She absolutely is a waste of a colleague. I genuinely don't care if this makes me sound like a twat. I'm fed up of picking up the extra workload and I wish they would sack her.

I agree. I have no problem supporting colleagues with a chronic condition, but expect my managers to have a plan on how this is managed within the team to avoid burnout, resentment, and stress.
I do have a problem when I am expected to do quadruple what my colleagues do, because I am faster, manage my time better, or am more thorough.

Respect does not mean adding their workload to one's own though.

I can respect adjustments, but not if it impacts my workload and my health. It’s up to the manager to manage the situation, not up to colleagues to take on the stress and extra work.

Lots of liars here! Wonder how they’d feel if they were you?

I have a colleague who earns twice as much as me and has barely clocked up half the hours as me!

If you can’t work, free up the vacancy for someone who can.

An employer can only make adjustments when they are fully aware of the situation, and even then, the workload the colleague is allocated still needs to be completed. Even with adjustments, it may still be that someone can only fulfil their role part time.

None of Overtherainbows questions or expectations were unreasonable, and nothing in those suggestions was treating a disabled person as a problem. If anything, it’s treating adults with respect to assume them capable of doing what they can to help themselves.

THIS IN SPADES.

Sounds like she's just a twat, and would be without her chronic health condition.

I work the same hours as everyone else except when I'm off sick
If I can't work, who will pay for everything? Because I'm not sick enough to be entitled to claim anything
People don't seem to think it can happen to them but you could be hit with a diagnosis out the blue any day and be in the same situation

So if a member of staff was off work for 9 months while they undergo chemotherapy and radiotherapy they should be sacked and replaced by someone who doesn't have cancer?

The ‘chronic illness’ is a red herring though. People are annoyed with colleagues who underperform , to the extent of impacting them. Or who get more £££ than them despite doing less/worse work.

Again it’s not really the colleagues’ fault. It’s managers. They should be paying everyone what they’re worth, or managing the workload.

FWIW thé impact of an illness really depends on team members’ capability and how it’s structured. Someone very good at their job, in a balanced team, lots od room for absorption.

Someone who sucks to begin with, isn’t going to improve with sickness issues. And if the team has lots of key person dependencies… makes no sense for everyone else covering. It’s not set up for such things…

@MountainDewer yeah that's a totally different thing. My performance is good, and when I'm working it's 100%
I just have more sickness than the average person

@Sugarplumfairy65 Making up an emotive example is useless.
There’s no such thing as indefinite sick leave. After a certain point the company stops paying.

Sorry, I haven't rtft. Honestly, I've struggled with this in the past.

Try being a patient in an NHS clinic and a few staff are sick (not long term and coverable, but intermittent due to a chronic illness) so not able to arrange cover. Your nurse/ahp/Dr will be overrun and your treatment will suffer with delays or your appointment cancelled.

It's just the way it is, we're all human. But I couldn't cope with the constant extra workload and eventually left after a few years for a new workplace. Maybe some workplaces are different and there's some respite or better cover, but in mine it felt like a constant struggle of being understaffed and I couldn't carry on.

Actually that’s the reason why so many people with cancer carry in working for as long as they can.
Because otherwise, cancer or not, they are going over the threshold for absences and risk being sacked.

So yes you end up with someone with a chronic illness, nit on the top of their game by default, who will ‘keep a job they can’t do’ (to repeat an expression by a PP) instead of leaving it to so,one who can. Because you know, otherwise, they end up ill AND with no money/having to sell their house etc…

I worked in a hospital where several staff members in my department had illnesses which meant they were employed for a job that they couldn't actually do!
A clinical job without being able to do the clinical work!

As annoying as it was to have to cover for them, I blamed the managers more for just allowing the ridiculous situation.

I'm really surprised anyone wouldn't think op was talking about themselves as the person with illness!

@Only4You You mean, people keep working, despite being unable to do their jobs, because they'll be sacked?
It depends on the company but in mine (large corporation) we have 6 months paid leave. Once that's used up someone can choose to take unpaid leave. What usually happens is HR, line manager and employee attempt to come to a reasonable solution such as working part-time. Which also enables manager to hire a temp, or other extra staff needed.

IME people are very rarely sacked. They are however not paid a FT salary for not doing a FT job once the sick leave provision is exhausted. Again depending on the specific situation... something like cancer treatment (which can have an end date) very different from a lifelong chronic illness.

Wow. My partner suffers from an illness like this and it is absolute hell for him when he has a flare up. People at his work have been absolutely awful which had made his condition worse. It is no fun for people who suffer like this. Trust me they would rather feel well and be able to give 100%.

Again depending on the specific situation... something like cancer treatment (which can have an end date) very different from a lifelong chronic illness.

Er, cancer is a lifelong chronic illness. It doesn’t matter if active treatment (surgery or radiotherapy or chemotherapy etc) has ended. Once diagnosed with cancer, you are legally disabled for the rest of your life, and all regulations regarding disability, equality and reasonable adjustments apply - for ever. Even if not in active treatment, the effects of ongoing drug treatment, fatigue and lack of concentration, for example, are ongoing and chronic. And cancer has a tendency to recur, so you begin the cycle again.

This!