To report this to my manager?

[Thelordnelson]

Colleague had an incident and has been off work a long time as not able to drive due to injury. Our job involves some driving and not able to work from home.

Colleague lives quite some distance away and our manager is young and inexperienced and appears not to question anything colleague says, just keeps taking the sick papers that are on a monthly basis.

I was on a day out yesterday and saw colleague driving into a shopping centre car park. I stayed parked up and they went into the store and exited carrying heavy cans of paint and some lengths of timber. Seemed not to have any issue with walking, lifting or driving.

As it happens we don’t actually need colleague back as we’ve all absorbed their work easily. They were a difficult person anyway and none of us want them back.

Torn as to whether to mention I’ve seen them or not. I have no evidence so am thinking just stay quiet. I am so annoyed though, they’ve had nearly 3 months full pay on the sick since the beginning of the year.

I’m not sure I agree. It’s reasonable to raise a concern about suspicious fraudulent activity. Just the same as if you overhear racism it doesn’t mean it isn’t “your business” and it’s just a HR matter. How would HR actually know anyway if things weren’t reported? You can report something - what you factually witnessed rather than what you think about what it means - and it can then be taken from there. I’m not saying you should pull the trigger of running to HR at all opportunities. But it may be appropriate, depending on the context.

"Ooh did everyone have a nice Easter weekend? Yeah, I did too thanks. Bumped into Debbie at B&Q on Saturday picking up some paint and skirting boards, it's nice to see she's recovering well and back to driving after that awful injury"

I idly wonder about the type of person that would seek to do something like this. Not someone that I would wish to spend time with.

Agreed

@IWasAimingForTheSky Definitely. I agree totally. That's what I meant.

A referral to OH for a colleague is not something the OP should be raising with her manager. Not her business.

Overhearing racism and seeing a colleague who is on sick leave out in public are completely different. There is no correlation there.

As I’ve said previously. A colleague being off sick isn’t another colleagues business. They can report their concerns to management who should then deal with providing cover or distributing the workload.

But the reason ‘why’ their colleague is off, is not their business.

No it isn't.

So it’s not wrong if someone is being dishonest about their sickness? Of course it is. And it does impact on you in way that is fundamentally unfair.

Of course someone off sick for genuine reasons is different.

There must be a policy on this surely? You could ask whether they are expected back soon as you've seen them driving (if the not driving wad why they are signed off). It is not hard to get a fit note, you only need to ring the surgery, no Dr visit needed where I am.

I've had multiple situations like this at work. The most recent having to bed over backwards for a man on crutches who was too week to open doors etc. Had to make many accommodations. Then someone sent a video around of him at a Costco no crutches putting heavy items in a cart no crutches. Sadly management couldn't do anything. He did hear about the video and quit .

I hold my hands up and admit, I don’t like the woman . She’s lazy, will happily offload work onto others. Books up annual leave at peak periods and doesn’t care that others maybe want a turn at those dates.

So ideally, we don’t want her back. The temptation is there to drop her in it but I’m going to stay quiet. If I dont know the full story I will look the unreasonable one. I’ll let the universe sort her out. Enough rope and she’ll hang herself hopefully 🤞

Enough rope and she’ll hang herself hopefully 🤞

Jesus Christ how vile 🤢🤢

It's a turn of phrase, doubt op meant it literally

Exactly my god some ppl

Definitely a turn of phrase! God this place is ridiculous 😂

"much better"...?

Much better at doing someone else's job, that she doesn't actually do.

Or much better at sticking her nose in?

How do you not know that turn of phrase? Extremely common.

It’s a vile turn of phrase.

If it's the NHS you need to tell counter fraud. If it's innocent, nothing will happen. If on the other hand, she is stealing by claiming sickness /inability drive it can be dealt with.

People can give sick notes in and as a manager there is not a lot you can do experienced or not. Presumable the manager is taking advice from HR? At some point they will need to look at referring to occupational health and assessing whether there is any reasonable chance of them returning to work but that should all be done via HR. As a manager you can suspect people are lying about sickness but you have to take it at face value.

You don’t know if her reason for being off has changed from the initial incident to a mental health issue etc.

butt out.