To think a company can't demote you after stress leave?

[GreenHeritier]

Hi all, posting here for traffic and have NCed to protect friend's anonymity.

A close friend of mine has been on stress leave for 5 months following a burnout. Her role was a high-pressure, high-responsibility managerial role running a large team. She is now feeling better and had a few conversations with HR about returning to work.

She has requested that they make some tweaks to her role so she can avoid stressful, high-pressure responsibilities like dealing with well-known difficult people or particularly stressful projects.

HR has now said that they can't accommodate her request and that they therefore don't think she is fit to take her original role back as she can't perform the duties the role requires. They have offered her a smaller, low-responsibility role with no managerial duties, but with the same salary as before.

AIBU I think what they are doing is illegal and she should speak to a lawyer?

Sounds reasonable as she’s being paid the same, but I would suggest it’s carefully documented and if she feels up to doing the higher grade role in the future she doesn’t have to jump through too many hoops to get back there. What kind of support has she got access to at work? Are steps being taken to address how the stress built up in the first place? Has there been a review of the factors?

It would be unreasonable of course if there’s another aspect eg the employer knew about a difficult person causing stress to her and did not take reasonable steps to protect her mental health and deal with other employees behaviour.

Not currently practising in this area but I have some employment law experience.

Sounds perfectly reasonable to me - though hard to say definitively without knowing the exact nature of the two roles. Does your friend hope to return to her previous role in the future? Perhaps she can speak to her employer about gradually taking on more managerial responsibility again and working towards her old position?

After months of sick leave it wouldn’t seem wise to plunge back into the old job, even with a few modifications. No harm in taking things slowly and it doesn’t have to affect long term job prospects. However, it’s possible that your friend isn’t suited to this kind of stressful role longer term anyway.

Friend is an ambitious person who has worked her socks off to get where she is now, and going back would be humiliating for her as well as having a potential long-term damage on career progression.

But she can't just expect to keep the senior title if she isn't doing the senior aspects of the role.

Less stress and responsibility for the same money sounds the absolute dream tbh. I think the company have been very accommodating given she has proven she is unable to cope with the demands of the job

(And I’ve had stress leave myself)

@AnneLovesGilbert

What’s her alternative proposal? I know nothing about HR but to he offered the same money for far less stress and responsibility sounds brilliant. The status is surely linked to the responsibility and she’s opting out of that.

She would go from leading a large team, with people management responsibilities and working on a lot of high-profile strategic stuff, to a project manager role working on optimizing processes within the same team she used to lead. Unfortunately her expertise is quite specific so her skills can't easily be transferred to another team internally.

Well this all sounds more than reasonable to me! They're offering her a suitable role with no loss of salary, despite her saying she cannot do the job they're paying her for...

It wouldn't be fair on the other senior members of the team if she goes back to the old role but farms out all the stressful bits.

Is this a reverse? Do you have an unreasonable employee on your hands?

@GreenHeritier

Hi all, posting here for traffic and have NCed to protect friend's anonymity.

A close friend of mine has been on stress leave for 5 months following a burnout. Her role was a high-pressure, high-responsibility managerial role running a large team. She is now feeling better and had a few conversations with HR about returning to work.

She has requested that they make some tweaks to her role so she can avoid stressful, high-pressure responsibilities like dealing with well-known difficult people or particularly stressful projects.

HR has now said that they can't accommodate her request and that they therefore don't think she is fit to take her original role back as she can't perform the duties the role requires. They have offered her a smaller, low-responsibility role with no managerial duties, but with the same salary as before.

AIBU I think what they are doing is illegal and she should speak to a lawyer?

How can it be illegal, her job role involved stressful projects and stressful people who your friend can't cope with, that means she or he is no longer fit for their role. To be offered a lesser role and kept on the same pay is better than being offered no alternative role. Many people have lost their jobs this year, maybe she should be thankful for the job she has been offered, especially as she or he won't suffer financially

I think the key is that it's work related stress.
Had your friend had a breakdown following external issues (bereavement for example) then it might be different. However, even then I'd expect there to be a period of phased return.
The company sound like they're dealing with this in a good way. Easing your friend back into work, then there will always be opportunities to get back to the same level.
Rather than encouraging your friend to take legal action, I would reframe her 'demotion' as a break from a highly stressful job and an opportunity to develop better coping strategies if she wants to get back to her previous level in the company. The humiliation she feels is probably in her head. Work isn't everything, some perspective and other opportunities to broaden her horizons may be a really positive change.

I'm qualified to say that that sounds entirely reasonable to me, on the employer's part.

It will not have been easy for them to resource the role during a 5 month absence. That's not her issue, I recognise, but presumably they need to offer a level of consistency to clients and also balance this with a duty of care that she's well enough to return.

I would imagine occ health have been involved but we'd be looking at a phased return in this situation, and assessing if it's the kind of one off she can be supported to recover from, or whether the nature of the work just doesn't suit.

Harsh though this sounds, she can't have it all ways and they don't sound to be acting unfairly at all. I'd very much like to be paid as a CEO but I'd hate the responsibility so am happy at my level.

They have a duty of care to her if the role stress her out then she's not suitable for it.
The job still need to be done she can't cherry pick what she thinks she'll be ok with and leave the rest .

She would go from leading a large team, with people management responsibilities and working on a lot of high-profile strategic stuff, to a project manager role working on optimizing processes within the same team she used to lead. Unfortunately her expertise is quite specific so her skills can't easily be transferred to another team internally.

Is this her proposal or the company's proposal?

@HelpMeh

Well this all sounds more than reasonable to me! They're offering her a suitable role with no loss of salary, despite her saying she cannot do the job they're paying her for...

It wouldn't be fair on the other senior members of the team if she goes back to the old role but farms out all the stressful bits.

Is this a reverse? Do you have an unreasonable employee on your hands?

Not a reverse, just trying to help out a friend who is driving herself nuts with anxiety about her return to work and frankly I don't know what to advice.

She could speak to ACAS but if same salary/grade it is not really a demotion. There is still a management role to be done and unfortunately she cannot fulfil it. Are Occupational Health involved?

If that's her proposal, I assume she would be happy to accept a reduction in salary/change in job title to reflect the reduced responsibility?

If it's the company's proposal, I think they're being incredibly generous to protect her salary in this lesser role!

I'd bite their hands off. Same pay, less stress. She can always apply for promotion later when she's ready.

I would advise her to take the role. I had something similar several years ago, following an incident that wasn't my fault and about which ACAS said I would have a good shot at constructive dismissal if I resigned. I took a paycut and a demotion. I left a year later to a better role, at 150% of my demoted salary and made director two years later; I was able to make the ground back up much more easily than expected.

She should take the role and use the lower stress / time to move on. If she speaks to a lawyer, what is the likely outcome? Constructive dismissal is hard to prove, costly, relationships are soured and, if she works in a small/medium industry, her card will be marked. It's shit, but that's life. The best case scenario is some kind of settlement agreement but that's unlikely given they have offered a reasonable adjustment and she'll be left with no income and in the same position (i.e. job hunting).

She can make up any old excuse about the new role, e.g. 'wanted to understand a different bit of the business' etc.

@paralysedbyinertia this is the company's proposal.

Her proposal was to continue leading the team but with those modifications I mentioned, and hands-on support from someone else in the team for the bits she couldn't do.

Not a reverse, just trying to help out a friend who is driving herself nuts with anxiety about her return to work and frankly I don't know what to advice.

It sounds like she is still quite unwell. Is she actually ready to go back to work yet?

If she is determined to return, then she should take the offer that has been made. It doesn't sound like she is in a position to cope well with her original role right now.

Not a reverse, just trying to help out a friend who is driving herself nuts with anxiety about her return to work and frankly I don't know what to advice.

Advise her to take the job and be glad it’s on offer. She clearly isn’t “better” if this option is causing her anxiety. Most often if people are demoted they lose pay. She gets the less stressful job she needs, but at the same salary. That’s a win win and she’d be a fool to dismiss it on the basis of some vague “future career” notion.

Re: humiliation. I get it. I really do. It was hard, but I got through it by ignoring a lot of it, pretending I didn't care and constantly repeating that quote by Eleanor Roosevelt: “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”

She has literally told them she can’t do her old role as it is too difficult/stressful for her. So they have offered her an ‘easier’ less stressful role for the same money. Why on earth is she pissed off? Unfortunately for your friend she isn’t up to the role she had, that’s not anyone’s fault it’s just how it is. She should be biting their bloody hand off

I think she should jump at it and bite their hand off.

I would also consider this a no brainer. If she is worried about those particular items of the role, she isn't ready to take them on, so being offered the same money to avoid them is a brilliant deal. I don't see what else they can do? I'd do it!!!

As her friend, I think you should support her in accepting the new role. Suggest she gives herself a year say, in that position and then reassess what direction she wants to go in. If she is hard working & good at her job then I’m sure this set back won’t stop her long term.

I do think you should be careful about possibly increasing her anxiety with talk about lawyers & how unfair work are being. It sounds like she may still be quite fragile.

[quote GreenHeritier]@paralysedbyinertia this is the company's proposal.

Her proposal was to continue leading the team but with those modifications I mentioned, and hands-on support from someone else in the team for the bits she couldn't do.[/quote]
But can you not see why from a company pov why that wouldn’t work?

She is basically proposing a team leader who isn’t able to do parts of the team leaders job and as such is going to need others to take on bits of her role