Would you resent me if I was your employee or colleague ?

[Jimisnotmyname]

DC is seriously ill and inpatient in hospital. Expected to be in for several months. I have been asked by the hospital to be on side to help with various aspects of their care. In theory, I could take my notebook in and work from the ward (and do some catch up at night from home) but I am not coping. I am falling apart and not coping with anything. Would I be unreasonable to take sick leave? We get 6 months on full pay. I have been with my employer for over a decade and only was once off sick for a month (after major surgery). It would mean my colleague's holiday will have to be cancelled and I would let a lot of people down in my department and I feel hugely guilty about that. But I don't know what else to do. I know the decent thing would be to resign but I need the sick pay to cover bills. Please be honest.

yabu - suck it up and carry on working or resign.
yanbu - get signed off

If the colleague's holiday is at Easter there's plenty of time to cancel it, employers only have to give the same amount of notice as the time off would have been (so if they're off for two weeks, they have to have at least two weeks notice). It's not obligatory for the employer to refund the holiday cost either (though it's good practice so as not to piss off the employee) so that's not a factor.

You can be signed off if you need to be, how your absence is covered is not your problem, that's what managers are paid to sort out.

Running a company means planning for absences. It means having contingency plans for if a staff member needs to take time off, especially if the company's policy is to allow that (the 6 months on full pay seems pretty generous to me).

If I was your colleague who couldn't go on holiday because of this, I would be asking the company for serious compensation. Maybe hiring someone to replace you would be better and cheaper.

And what happens if that colleague gets sick too? Will the company literally go bankrupt if you are off for 6 months and your colleague takes 2 weeks holiday? (*) If so, have you both asked about the possibility of being chauffeured to and from work in armoured limousines, because clearly they shouldn't be taking the risk of you getting hurt in an accident? If not, how "vital" is the presence of any individual? It's probably "vital" to your immediate line management, but that's not the only consideration. Situations like this usually come down to a lack of willingness on the part of management to fix the problem creatively, because it's so much easier to dump it on the first people in line.

(*) This can happen. Around when Y2K was happening, a friend of mine who worked in a privatised utility told me that they had identified that were only two people who kept the billing system going. He said "If they came to us tomorrow and said they were going freelance and demanded a million pounds a year, we'd have to pay it". IT management spent the next couple of years quietly unwinding that situation while trying to prevent those two people from catching on.

Oh dear lord what have I just read. Your home set up is none of your employers business and neither is how you manage the childcare (in fact it seems like your husband is sharing the load). It is not for your employers business to make those judgements or tell you how to run your household. Whilst I understand the sentiment of what the pp says, it is absolutely none of their business.

setting aside everything else the symptoms you have explained are those of someone with stress and anxiety which is understandable given the circumstances. You need to listen before you get full blown burn out. It is reasonable for you to be off sick given these symptoms, but it is not reasonable to use sick leave to sit at your child’s bedside if you are well - that is what compassionate and parental leave is there for.

go talk to a gp. See if your organisation has an employee assistance programme (and use it). And make sure you are getting some level of respite from the hospital. And keep in touch with your employer. If you are reasonable they should be too (if they are any good).

to enable you to look after your family you need to be well

I realise I didn't answer the actual question:

No, I wouldn't resent you. I may resent my employer if their failure to manage resources meant I had to cancel my holiday, it would depend how much I needed it and how they presented it to me. If they refunded all my costs (including the costs of anyone who was going with me) and ensured I could take the same holiday at a time that was agreeable to me, paying for any increase, I might be OK with it.

@Jimisnotmyname i wouldn’t resent you.

I would resent the company that has so little advance planning that it can’t cope with 2 people been off at once. It would be heavily directed towards my boss and the company overall.

P,please remember that the organisation kf the department isn’t your responsibility. You’re supposed to do your job the best way you can. It’s ok to be off work if you are ill. Which you are. Just like people take time off after a death in the family etc…

It’s lovely that you care about your co workers and the impact you being off will have on them. But dint make it a situation where your needs disappear in the background vs their needs. Let alone the ‘needs’ of a company who doesn’t care about you (like any company btw)
You need time off. With good reasons. Go and see your GP and go off sick. Your company and coworkers are aware of what’s happening. It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone.

I wouldn't resent you. A colleague just had 6 months off as her partner nearly died and needed to learn to walk/talk again. No one felt anything except sympathy. It's up to management to resolve staffing issues regarding holidays, they can't expect no one to be off because youre on sick leave that would just end up with more off for stress. Think of yourself and your child, sorry things are so difficult.

It's your employer's job to manage staffing including having contingency plans for sick leave. Not yours.

It would mean my colleague's holiday will have to be cancelled and I would let a lot of people down in my department and I feel hugely guilty about that.

Anything could happen to you, you could have some sort of accident and be unable to work, the fact that your department is run without a sufficient back up plan is not your responsibility and nothing you should feel guilty about, at the end of the day, family should always come before your job.

If you can work from the hospital remotely, then why not just have a couple of weeks off sick to get your head straight and put in a process where you can feasible work remotely, maybe with some adjustments made to your role temporarily? I'm not minimising what support you are offering your child, but surely you must be sitting around a lot of the day just being present at the hospital with not much to do? It's the stress of trying to keep up with everything that is causing you to fall apart?

Could you talk to your employer and try and work something out, if they refuse to budge an inch then I would have no problem with just going off sick instead.

Good luck OP it sounds like a horrible situation.

Your colleagues might resent you if you are not there. Your child might resent you if you are not there too.

It's an easy choice: prioritise your child. All they have is you.

Your colleagues will cope. Pay no heed to their feelings. They are not a priority for you and right now, their feelings are unfortunate but irrelevant.

Take the time now, focus on your child and yourself. It's is so emotionally and physically draining to be living in hospital with your child, people who haven't been through it can't appreciate how hard it is. It's just just the worry about your child, it's finding the time to have a shower, eat, sleep, remember all of the information that everyone is batting around because you will be asked a million questions and be expected to be an expert on your child and their treatment.

Don't even consider working from the ward. There is only so much of you and it doesn't stretch to work right now. Anybody who has an issue can have an issue, don't engage because that isn't yours to deal with.

I don't agree with anyone taking sick leave when what they need is their employer to try to come up with something that works better for everyone.

How would you manage 'sick' leave? You aren't ill- so how would a dr sign you off for 6 months?

I've not read the full thread so maybe this has been answered.

Ideally, your employer (assume this is public sector?) should try to accommodate a change in family circumstances and work with you so everyone does the best they can.

You need an honest and open conversation with work to try to thrash this out.

If they value you, they should try to find a solution.

Many years ago when I had surgery and needed help at home with 2 very young children, my DH was allowed to work from home as much as necessary.

It was an open conversation and an agreement was reached.

Maybe talk to them?

It’s assuming that
1- the company is actually willing to be flexible
2- the OP is able to still work. Which understandably, she says she isn’t. I mean, do you really think you’d be able to work from a hospital room, sitting in fro t of your child is badly ill? Would you be able to concentrate when already the OP is ill with worry, loosing weight and simply hanging by a thread?

If ot was a case of just reorganising timetable, giving more flexible hours, place of work. Yep I fully agree with you.
But that’s not the OP’s case.

Neither you nor I know the full circumstances do we?

We don't know what they might be able to organise.

The other option is for her to take time out and be replaced by someone, like they do for any employee who is off sick (for themselves) or similar to a maternity leave situation.

This

Your colleague's holiday is not your responsibility.

From an HR point of view no I absolutely don’t recommend this. OP is either too sick to work or she isn’t. Doing this undermines her position and opens her up to risk.

Her colleague’s holiday is not her problem to sort. She shouldn’t even be thinking of it, just focusing on reducing her stress.

It’s actually in the first post. OP states she is not coping and is at breaking point. That’s why she is sick.

I agree. I'm not trying to be brutal, I agree you need time off. I think you should ignore your colleague and focus on you. They're irrelevant. But your company might be solution-focused, they might not. They might well put the business' needs first. It's really hard to say. I think, for now, you can legitimately claim you are sick (you sound exhausted), get properly signed off, focus on recovering and looking after yourself. See how you feel in a month. Then re-evaluate.

This might seem a bit simple ... You can always get a new job. You can't get a new child. Your health and your child's health should come before work. Always.

Take the leave. The holiday isn't your responsibility and it is likely they would do the same if they had a seriously ill child.

My son was in hospital for 10 months. I had to leave my job in the end because no one expected he'd be in hospital for almost a year.

Hope your child gets well soon. It's so difficult having a child in hospital.

But rn she sounds legitimately ill, so sick leave is valid. And in however long the company might be open to an agreement as she's been a valued employee.

OP, very few people who respond to this thread will have a critically ill child, particularly not one who requires long hospital stays. They will view it in direct response to your question about how a colleague may view those who go off on long-term sick leave. My response, as a parent who has had a child who was critically ill and has life limiting conditions caused by treatment, my response is: your employer is not your family. They will not think twice about replacing you in a heartbeat if the business decides it doesn't need you. Do what is right for you and your child. The business offers paid sick leave, you are sick, so get signed off and take it. Do not try and work from the hospital. You can't be a carer and a committed employee at the same time and you will run youself into the ground by trying; then you'll be incapable of doing either. Everything in life is about balance and shifting priorities as situations arise. Right now, your health and that of your child needs to be your priority. Will your colleagues understand? Some of them may; most won't have the faintest idea what you or your child are going through. They are not your concern though.

Do NOT resign. That is NOT the decent thing to do. Stay employed as long as humaly possible. Take sick leave and if it causes an issue, cross that bridge when you come to it. Your colleague's holiday is not your issue to resolve, that is the job of the team's line manager. They could always employ temporary cover if your absence has a major impact on the team.

Agree. Do not resign.

I don't think I'd want to be signed off for six months but I would try and open up the conversation with my employer around flexibility, reduced hours etc I also think you'd find it very hard to return after six months, in my experience people don't tend to come back - either through their own choice, or they find themselves replaced/managed out of the business,

I’ve always been a bit dubious about policies for job shares that require cross-cover. If you employed one person in the role you’d expect them to have annual leave and be absent. I’ve heard it on here a few times but that has never been my experience of colleagues working job shares who have always had annual leave and set days of working as per their contact.

OP- you are under doing a period of massive stress. Even if you got yourself signed off for a few weeks before Easter it would give you a bit of breathing space. In your position, I’d try and do all I could to avoid shafting the job share partner if your employer do indeed take that stance that they’d cancel her leave. I’d be surprised if they actually did unless they were total idiots but if you’re convinced they would I’d either take leave for the period before or take leave once she’s left the country and tell her to turn her phone off.