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?

There's someone currently in role managing perfectly well 🤷🏻‍♀️

As was she until she fell ill.

I can see how she doesn’t want to accept the demotion - everyone is saying that this is a great option. It isn’t. Once you lose your title you may never get it back again, and salary flatlines without progression. She needs to think very carefully about what she wants. If she accepts that she needs to leave the big job title behind and move on, take the offer. If she has any doubts at all she should seek some specialist legal advice right now. Not necessarily with a view to instructing them to represent her - this would only make sense if she wants to try to negotiate a deal to leave, but to give strategic advice on negotiation. But if she wants the title she is going to have to do all aspects of the job. But she may be able to negotiate a longer adjustment period (impossible to know what these would be without knowing the whole situation). She should think in the long term what she really wants (not thinking about it as simply a return to work) because title and status are everything in professional settings - the money is just a side issue.

@GreenHeritier
She thinks they are planning on offering her old role to the person who's been doing the job as temporary replacement whilst she is out on leave.
It sounds like she'd be deserving of it if she's had to pick the pieces up at short notice and has excelled, as well as this being in the midst of a pandemic.
I'm not sure why you or her think she deserves more than this. Nor why she believes she's suitable for promotion etc elsewhere when she clearly cannot manage at this level.

@C8H10N4O2

There's someone currently in role managing perfectly well 🤷🏻‍♀️

As was she until she fell ill.

Some people have less resilience than others. It's not a given that other incumbents will react in the same way.

Your friend can't simply cherry pick the parts of the job she'd like to do and leave the rest. I think her employer is being pretty reasonable actually.

*Would you be OK with doing your bosses hard parts of their job, while they get the pay and prestige of the job and you get nothing extra?

That's effectively what this woman wants. It's kind of no wonder that hr said no. Imagine the hell they'd get from the poor person below her that gets that deal

We don't know what she wants because we don't know the details. We do know that employers often have very rigid ideas about roles when they could be more flexible or deal with them in other ways.

She has done the role for a number of years, so presumably either its burn out from a long term mismatch, or specific issues which rose last year or the role was fundamentally overloaded. We don't know which.

As for the "difficult' bits - who says the difficult clients are the most difficult? The solutions/project designs or a bunch of other things might be the really complex part of the role, whilst dealing with awkward sods is just a noise issue which don't need expertise.

We don't know enough about the job and the friend to assume one way or the other.

I’d bite their hand off!!!

Some people have less resilience than others. It's not a given that other incumbents will react in the same way

That is the stock answers from employers making unreasonable demands or overloading staff.

We don't know enough about the job to know where the actual problem is or to say if the response was fair or unreasonable. OP states the friend had worked in this space successfully for years. Everyone immediately assumes that the employer is in the right and friend should be lucky to be in a job when the reality might be an unreasonably demanding employer who need to avoid case for constructive dismissal.

We don't know enough details.

If she’s not up to the job then she’s not up for the job. If someone can do that job without have to be ill with stress from it then they will employ that person. 5 months off is a very long time to be off for work stress. People get less for deaths. Perhaps, there’s more going on?

It'd be very ill advised to think about constructive dismissal. This person has been offered a role which takes the areas of stress she couldn't deal with away from her, while a colleague is excelling in her previous role.

I know nothing about this field or corporate working, but I'd be interested to learn what the managers she is managing think of the situation, because she had responsibility for their performance too. How can she say to her team members, or second or third in command: "Look I know it's difficult, but you just have to get Mr Brown's documents ready when he says he needs them. It's stressful, but he'll be easier to deal with once you've shown you can meet his demands on the first part of the project." How can she tell people to lap up the stress and just take a deep breath when she's divested herself of half her work load and all her tricky customers, and needed time off from pressure herself?

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.

So who's going to take on those fun, fun responsibilities instead?

Her lesser-paid underlings?

Not sure I understand why the friend wants to progress further in a field that she’s already struggling in. Aren’t the pressures going to be a lot worse the higher up she gets? It’s good to be ambitious but you’ve got to be realistic too haven’t you?

The job still needs to be done in its entirety; your friend is admitting she can no longer do it. She is being offered a different job for the same money as an accommodation. Sounds reasonable, imho.

It sounds a bit too good to be true. How long would she be in the new junior role before the position is made redundant? I would be thinking very carefully about the offer.

I don't see what's wrong with suggesting delegating parts of the position to other members of the team as this is done all the time in the event of restructure or when the role becomes too big for one person, which could be what's underlying her stress.

It's all very well to say someone else is up for it but they have only been doing it for a short time and may end up in the same burnout situation long term.

Definitely seek legal advice.

I have been on a team in a large company where our manager needed to take sick leave due to stress at a very demanding stage of our project. I and another employee had no choice but to step up and take over our manager's role.
While I did sympathize with our manager, this demanding stage would not be a once off. Our manager returned to work a month after the project finished. There was no plan put in place for if it should happened again and our manager did drop hints that we would be expected to help out again if needed. This was a factor in my moving jobs.
The next large project, the same manager had to take sick leave again at a critical time.
In my opinion, the company in this instance is doing the best for your friend, the team and the company.

To be honest, her work-optimising processes could actually save other people from getting stressed in future because her reforms could rationalise time frames and processes to give early warnings of problems.

She could use her own experience of stress to chop out the particularly useless, unfit for purpose processes and improve communication. She could end up doing this for the whole company and making her mark as a strategist par excellence.

If she subtracts the stress, then what she's left with in her working life is strategy, so why not embrace the new role.

It'd be very ill advised to think about constructive dismissal. This person has been offered a role which takes the areas of stress she couldn't deal with away from her, while a colleague is excelling in her previous role

They would be ill advised not to explain why the recut roles don't work from a business perspective.

We don't know if her replacement is excelling, simply that she has been doing the role satisfactorily as the op did previously. Burn out is often a slow burn, no doubt the friend also did fine for years or she wouldn't have still been in role. I saw people burn out last year who had been top of their game for years.

Its more cost effective to us to work out how best to get them back into work at full capability but they are our main assets. That may be reduced load initially - so for me the question would be is this temporary to see how it goes, is there a business reason why the roles can't be recut?

I fundamentally disagree with the assumption on this thread that difficult clients are automatically the most difficult part of the job - we know nothing about the scope and complexity of the rest of the job.

If she can’t see how great this offer is, I’d be seriously questioning her decision-making skills right now, and querying whether she’s actually in a position to return to work.

They could have just as easily gone down the capability route.

Based on your opening post, she has very little protection here if they did decide to dismiss her due to lack of capability to perform her duties.

her work-optimising processes
These seem to consist of hiving off aspects of the role she's no longer happy to do to someone else, presumably more junior and less well paid than herself.

Op mentions dealing with difficult people and working on stressful projects. What about those things suggest they could be magicked out of existence instead of having to be taken on by someone else?
The friend is also suggesting that her team give "hands on support for the things she's unable to do".
Even she doesn't think there are redundant processes, just one's she prefer someone else to tackle for her.

[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]
If she cannot do the job - and they have offered her another one with less stress and same money, then FFS grab it!!

She cannot do the more stressful one

@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?

Her role was a high-pressure, high-responsibility managerial role running a large team

*She has requested they make some tweaks to her role so she can avoid stressful, high-pressure responsibilities...."

These are not just "tweaks". It sounds like the offer of a lower paced no managerial resposibilities role is exactly what she has asked for!!

If she's not up to the job, why should she be able to hold the title? And if she needed 5 months of leave then obviously she isn't.

The idea that she gets to keep the bits she likes and farm out the ones she doesn't is ridiculous.

She'll be getting the same salary for less work. SOunds perfect for her and makes perfect sense that the person doing her job for 5 months be able to continue. Especially when she cannot

@C8H10N4O2

It'd be very ill advised to think about constructive dismissal. This person has been offered a role which takes the areas of stress she couldn't deal with away from her, while a colleague is excelling in her previous role

They would be ill advised not to explain why the recut roles don't work from a business perspective.

We don't know if her replacement is excelling, simply that she has been doing the role satisfactorily as the op did previously. Burn out is often a slow burn, no doubt the friend also did fine for years or she wouldn't have still been in role. I saw people burn out last year who had been top of their game for years.

Its more cost effective to us to work out how best to get them back into work at full capability but they are our main assets. That may be reduced load initially - so for me the question would be is this temporary to see how it goes, is there a business reason why the roles can't be recut?

I fundamentally disagree with the assumption on this thread that difficult clients are automatically the most difficult part of the job - we know nothing about the scope and complexity of the rest of the job.

I believe the company's rationale is that the smaller role they have offered her is a role that she can perform on her own with no time pressure nor people dependencies (at least initially for a while), so they deemed it as a better fit for someone in her situation.

However, friend suspects that there is no real business need for the role and it is more of a "nice to have" job that they are creating just to park her somewhere.

hands-on support from someone else in the team for the bits she couldn't do.

Day to day, this would be much more humiliating that having a 'sideways' move to a different role.

Goodness, if she can't se what a good, generous offer this is, maybe she is not ready to go back to work.