Back to Work Interview

[pennyprincess]

Just wondered what mumsnetters make of this. Is it the norm?

I have had a back to work interview with a senior manager after being off one day. In the interview I was asked to explain my erratic pattern of attendance and I was made to feel that my reasons for absence were doubted. And also that I had excessive absences. The whole tone of the 30 minute interview was as if I had done something wrong - like a disciplinary hearing.

I said in the meeting that all the absences were genuine and I feel you are suggesting I am lying. To which she just went on about fullfilling of my terms and conditions - no empathy or stating she was not suggesting i was lying at all.

Admittedly I have had a few absences. I returned from mat leave last march:

• I was off a week in May - baby sick and then me
• A 3 day days in oct,I then went in for a day but was still ill so was then off a further week (so counts as 2 absences) *Then this absence 1 day - in fact not even a full day as I went home sick after arriving at work.

I have also had a couple of medical appointments off.

But I have also worked lots of extra hours.

I know this is a lot, certainly more than i have ever had before - but with 2 babies I think you pick up things more.

Is it normal for these things to be conducted like a discipline hearing.

I am definately not a cryer - I have never cried at work in 15 years. But I left the interview and went the loo and cried and was then on the verge of tears all afternoon. Then as soon as I got in the car I burst out crying.

I actually feel like going off sick with stress I am so upset and worked up, i am actually shaking.

The interview left me incapable of productive work in the afternoon and completely demotivated.

I absolutely despise sick policies. Quite a few companies in the US are dropping them and finding people are off less. Most likely because those that are truly sick don't come in and spread the germs around.

I have a few chronic illnesses and now work for myself, but I was out ill a lot when I still worked for a company. I had many 'back to work meetings' despite doctors notes and such.

I finally asked them what I was suppose to do if I was ill. They had no answer, they just had to have the meetings.

Try to not let them get to you even though they will make you feel guilty.

Everyone gets ill. It's a fact of being human.

You said "If your sick your sick, no employer can dismiss you for being sick" and then went on to talk about your own experiences, which suggests you were generalising about the legality of terminating employment for sickness reasons.

Keep your silly faces to yourself.

Firstly, the word is "you're" and secondly, you can be dismissed from your employment because of sickness. You can argue night is day if you want to, but you're wrong.

I think the interviews are supposed to make those who skive think again but mostly to cover the company so you don't sue them blaming the company as you've had a chance to mention work related problems / stress.

They should be done in a sympathetic way but this isn't always the case. In a previous job I had 3 instances of sickness - can't remember exactly what but dh was high up in the company and told them about the 2rd and 3rd absence rather than me calling in (which was against the policy but they were fine). I'd had a bad asthma attack and been on a nebuliser so was shattered the next day and needed to sleep. The other 2 instances were similarly dramatic and pg related (one was prem labour with dd at 32 weeks which then all stopped and I returned to work 3 days later). My MD was fab and told me that she just needed to check I was ok to be at work.

However, the same MD had a meeting with a friend/colleague and she had done pie charts to demonstrate her absences over 4 years and was really harsh on her. Clearly she didn't believe her.

Basically some managers are rubbish. Don't take it to heart. If you know your absences were genuine then don't stress and be better prepared if you have another one. If you go in and are confident and clear about the absences they cannot argue - but time off for dc should be compassionate leave (or whatever your work calls it) NOT sickness. It goes down differently on the paperwork.

I felt some sympathy OP until you said how upset you were that you felt like going off on stress leave and felt sad, sick and unproductive for the rest of the day - I am hoping that was just for our benefit or else you are just fulfilling the image your employer seems to have of you being someone who goes off sick at the drop of a hat.

As far as the possibility of dismissal for being sick goes there is a stack of legislation and set procedures to be followed wherever you work, but I have had people dismissed for lots of prolonged sickness in Local Authority and also in a private organisation. If you jump through the hoops laid down in law of course it is possible to sack someone for being off sick all the time - why wouldn't it be?

I work in the public sector and as certainly as other people have said this would be perfectly normal where I work. We have certain triggers such as going off sick three times in 6 months (even if it were only for one day as a time). We are also not allowed to apply for internal jobs unless our sickness is within the agreed level. If it isn't you can't apply for anything unless you've got you sickness down to the agreed level and stayed that way for two years.

Consequently a lot of people use leave or hours owed when they're just feeling under the weather. Certainly sickness has been used as one of the criteria in the recent round of redundancies and strangely the sickness levels have been at the lowest ever.

I recent the post that suggests i am a bit weak or a slacker or whatever for considering going off with stress. I feel stressed. And prior to kids even through 2 pgs I prob have about 5 days off in 15 years.

I have just looked at the exact dates of absences as I worl pt and was being approximate before. I have had 6 total days abesnce in a years and 3 days compassionate leave. So 9 days total.

OP, your employer is only following the company policy on sickness. They're not treating you harshly - the purpose of the interview was to demonstrate to you that they take sickness absence seriously, and will be keeping an eye on your absences in future.

They've taken a professional approach, and I'd counsel you to do the same. Taking more time off (ie with the stress thing) won't ultimately make you feel any better. You'll just have to face another interview when you go back, and by then, your employers will have moved on to the next stage in their process.

Try to work with them, rather than feel persecuted. And never take time off sick unless you are really too ill to work. And make sure you always see a doctor if you are too sick to work - you owe that to yourself, as well as your employer.

resent - not recent!

NB- i have no problem with the policy with interview - it is totally the tone of the interview

I doubt very much the interviewer would have treated some other older members of staff in the way i was.

I found the return to work interviews demoralising. Im my mind it was harrassment of people who were genuinely sick whilst people on long term sick were left alone. We had a policy whereby "occasions" of sickness were counted. So it was better to take the full week off when you were sick rather than being off one day, struggling in like a trooper to do a clinic the next day and then getting worse and being off sick again the next. There would be 2 occasions whereas if the whole week has been taken, it would have been just one. More than 3 occasions in 6 months, interview and panel discussion.
No good for conscientious individuals who tried to cover clinics in between getting sick, good for loafers who were off for a whole week with a sniffle.

Why so aggressive folks?
Why not just feel lucky that you haven't been sick much yourself? I don't understand the tone of some posts.

FFS you feel stressed?

Do you understand that it is this sort of attitude that has led to such problems with employers doubting that staff are really sick? You aren't sick, and you are not suffering with a stress related illness. You don't consider going off with stress because you felt like having a cry in the toilets - you go off with stress because life is overwhelmingly on top of you and you cannot function at all.

Nobody should take time off work unless you absolutely physically cannot get in and do the job - who the hell do you think you are that you think someone should pay you to sit at home because you feel a bit stressed. I find your attitude absolutely stunning.

(FWIW your actual proper sickness record doesn't sound that bad)

yuck Kickbuttowski, you sound horrible! what an angry post!

KickButtowski why so angry?

I am not horrible, but I get angry with people who have this sort of attitude to working. If you are fortunate enough to have a job then you should do your best to attend, not talk about going off on stress leave because someone has upset you. There are more professional ways of dealing with upset.

Yeah, but why do you get so angry?

I have never commented on compassionate leave, I am concerned that the OP feels that it is appropriate to go off work due to stress because someone has upset her in a BTW interview.

I wasn't aware she was worried about attitudes at work, I thought the OP was upset by this one interview.

Attitudes at work are of course stress factors, but as I said (angrily) feeling stressed is far removed from being incapacitated and therefore unable to work due to stress.

I think a lot of this is down to how managers conduct the interviews. I work in the NHS and we have the same rule - 3 absences in 6 months triggers a more in depth interview, but it is meant to be supportive, to look at ways in which illness can be reduced. A colleague of mine has lots of long-term health problems, most of them genetic, and my manager (and hers) handles her very sympathetically.

I've been in this situation too - a mixture of work stress (lost two staff members but no reduction in workload, a bout of D&V contracted at work and a nice fat dose of 'flu, plus absence due to injuries following a car crash and that was it. My manager was lovely about it, came up with some strategies that really helped that I'd never have thought of. That's how it should be, not the adversarial interview the OP seems to have experienced.