Colleague off long term sick but running businesses on the side

[bubblesandfizzwithcherryontop]

A colleague of mine, lets call her Jane has been off sick for the last 5 months.
She stormed out of the office one day after a row with our manager after being challenged about her bad attitude towards others and refusal to do certain aspects of her job role.

Despite being off sick and on full pay (NHS), Jane has been running a couple of home-based businesses on the side. One is arts and crafts based (making keepsake type gifts to sell), and the other is make up artistry (she does wedding and party make up). She advertises both of these side businesses all over Facebook and other SM. Very open about both of them.

People from work are on her SM, but this doesn't seem to deter her from advertising the businesses whilst off sick, allegedly too stressed to even get out of bed.

Its causing a lot of resentment at work, especially as she's on full pay.

Why 6 months? If someone has a set treatment plan, it may be they can return after 9 months or 12 months. Seems very arbitrary and unfair to say 6 months.

So if someone has cancer and needs twelve months off for treatment and recovery, they should have to lose their job and struggle with unemployment too?

What about if they're in a car accident and in hospital for months, or have a breakdown because of something in their personal life?

On top of the stress and pain of the above, none of which is their fault, do you really think they should have to deal with the stress of being unemployed too?

GPs have nothing to lose by signing someone off. At one time GPs’ say so was all that was needed to claim benefits like DLA, but some people abused that system, hence the introduction of independent assessments by the DWP.

Ex public sector here, known colleagues whose health suddenly improved at the end of six months, just as the full sick pay ended. Not everyone is genuine.

I can understand where your resentment is coming from, if this colleague isn't on sick for genuine reasons.
Which despite what most are saying, can happen.
Equally you're colleague could be genuinely unwell, so you will just need to let it go.

It is difficult as having someone on long term sick still takes up a head count in a lot of businesses, and as the business doesn't necessarily know when the employee is likely to return, they are not always able to take on a temporary worker to fill the gap.
Someone has to do that employee's work, and this usually falls to their colleagues.

Having been in this situation myself for almost 3 years solid (covering others work due to sickness), I've now been in both positions, having been off work for 6 weeks earlier in the year having had a mental health crisis due to the high workload.
During the 6 weeks I was off I did nothing but feel miserable about life and mope around the house, feeling like a failure and guilty for now pushing my work on others.
I wish I had done something theraputic to improve my mental health whilst I wasn't working.

I think your colleague is definitely being a bit daft posting it all over SM. I don’t know whether what she’s doing is right or wrong but of course it was going to cause resentment. My husband has a side business which is also a creative one and is so far removed from his public sector role. He’s just been off sick with stress/anxiety/management bullying for 5 months. Anyway, he removed everyone from SM so they couldn’t see past YouTube video content and he also didn’t create anymore/upload any
more during that 5 months. That was his choice, he just didn’t feel up to it. He makes specialised products and still sold them on Etsy as he found it so relaxing. It was a lone activity that allowed him to think and be away from work. It actually helped with his recovery. Each to their own.

Maybe wonder why your work place is so toxic that your colleague has been signed off sick from it.

Agree with this.

It depends on the two jobs. If she’s a nurse and is self employed as a caregiver then you can’t be unfit to do one but not the other but if she’s dog walking as a secondary job then that’s completely different and you could say possibly therapeutic. Perry v Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust is an example.

Bing signed off with stress is the biggest pisstake going.

Obviously there are people who genuinely are signed off because of stress, but a vast amount aren’t But there’s no benchmark there, go to the GP and say you’re stressed and voila,a sick note.

My DP has a colleague who has a sick note as long as your arm. And when she’s run out of medical diagnoses she’s gone off with stress. Once HR started putting pressure on her to come back she decided to put in a grievance against a team member with no defined time or date or incident, it’s that they talked too loudly in the office. This was shot down and she’s now been employed in a different department and surprise surprise, still hasn’t shown up for work yet.

But she too is running a business on the side.

Someone was fired from my place of work for something like this. Multinational company with a generous sick pay like the NHS if not more.
For more than 2 years, the colleague comes to work for a month and then goes off sick for almost 6 months because once the sick pay is about to half, he comes back again for a month. In that month, he’s busy relearning the system, doing the mandatory trainings and by the time the month was up, he was gone again for another 6 months.
He really took the piss but it’s so hard to get fired by my employer especially when one is off for mental health reasons.

After sometime, they found out that he had another full time, 9-5 job he was doing as a contractor. It was something to do with tax that made my employer aware and they investigated him for fraud. He got fired from both jobs actually, I don’t know if they got the money back though

Amazing the way that people always rush to create back stories for people that they've never met and don't know anything about the background of. Of course sometimes people do go off with genuine stress and many of us have had jobs where we really don't want to go in but we do sometimes forget that the people who do keep going in day after day do also feel the stress and more so when they are one person (or more) down.

Sickness
This relates to someone working in the NHS who has reported sick when they are actually fit for work. For example, this could be linked to them working elsewhere during the sickness period.

could being the operative word if you read Perry v Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust it’s not that clear cut.

I dismissed a nurse from her post who was off sick but all over social media flaunting her aesthetic business.

She's taking the piss. I doubt she'd get away with it in the private sector. Report her to management.

When the NHS is on its knees and you have people like this taking the piss. Plus the stress is then passed to the other staff who are covering her job role. But even if you report not sure they would do a lot.

Agreed, she will feel better after 5 months and three weeks and will agree to a phased return on full pay.

For those pointing out there may be a reasonable explanation. You are correct. Which is why the OP should repor to counter fraud who will investigate. If there is no fraud, there won’t be any further action.

Here is the link again. cfa.nhs.uk/reportfraud

reporting can be anonymous.

You and posters with similar responses really don't get it do you?

How can you not understand why the OP feels aggrieved?

It certainly does look like the colleague is taking the piss. Are you the colleague?

Not surprising the NHS is on its knees. This is not on IMHO.

Hello, I’m going against the status quo here and saying you should report it to your counter fraud team. I work for the NHS and there are now even standard questions on our return to work form to look at where colleagues are working elsewhere whilst claiming sick pay. If it is work related stress she is off with it may not be a problem but at least then you will have reassurance that your concerns have been looked into properly

Let your manager know so you know they know.

But, they may be managing this and following policy, you wouldn’t necessarily know.

well, you and colleagues are fine to be peeved.
She is fine to carry on, especially since she's being above-board about it. You have no idea if she is declaring her extra income so beaks out of that.

What you can do is approach your managers about your and your colleagues' workload and get that sorted. And if as a result she is brought back, has to drop her sidelines etc, that is an unfortunate (for her) consequence.

Concentrate on making your work environment better for you and your team and leave her to management.

It will depend what her fit note says, if it specifies that she is not fit to do her nhs role but fit to do her self-employed work then it might be ok.

If it says she's not fit for work without specification, then she shouldn't be working at all, and she's likely to get in trouble if shes getting NHS sick pay and working on the side.

Some GPs are better than others with being specific on the notes.

But unless you are her manager, you don't know what her fit not states (nor is it your business), but there's nothing wrong with reporting your concerns.

Is there no difference in the physical or mental requirements between the two roles?

I don’t necessarily agree with ‘working’ while off sick. But the difference (in mental strain especially) between a craft based side hustle for a few hours a week and an NHS full time role is obviously massive. It simply isn’t logical to say if you can work three hours a week, you can work forty hours a week. (And that’s the only one of most basic differences)

I don’t know about make up, but arts and crafts rarely make even minimum wage.

Whew lot's of support for being off work and paid by the NHS whilst running a couple of other jobs on the side. 5 months is a long time.

Six months full sick pay!! No wonder the NHS is on its knees. I work in the private sector and we get three days.

This would not sit well with me either, OP.

“allegedly too stressed to even get out of bed.”
”(she does wedding and party make up).”

I’d be peeved as well.

Can you report it your HR for them to investigate?