If you're a manager, what do you honestly think of staff going off on mental health sickness?

[CarrotCrusader]

I'm off at the moment, hopefully only short term but I'm really fretting of what my colleagues and bosses think of me.

Mental illness covers a broad spectrum of areas. An employee may not be able to physically and mentally work their job at the point of being signed off.

I think it very much depends on the person as a whole. I have experienced 2 extended periods of staff time off for mental health during my time as

A - had been with team for many years - polite, hard working, committed, positive, supportive of others, needed an extended time off of 3 months ish due to mental health and then a phased return. Was open with OH re process and needs. Due to knowing the type of person they were, I fully trusted them that if they were off then that absolutely were not well enough to be at work and fully supportive of them

B -joined team recently, had pattern of being off for a day or 2 a few times a month, very vague on detail, rude when asked to discuss absences with OH - stated this was too stressful and called OH nurse 'ableist' and 'racist' when asked to provide supporting information from their Dr. Turned out she was doing bank shifts for another organisation when off for us, but even without this, her pattern of ringing in sick regularly at short notice was very hard to plan for. It's much easier for us and better for staff member to take chunk of time off to get well and then return able to fulfill job role.

I view it the same as any other illness. If they need it they need it.

I agree with the pp who said that regardless of whether they think it is genuine, they say the right things, put the right support in place and go through the right processes. Privately, if I think they are milking any illness to get time off work, I will have a very dim view of them.

There are the staff that are grafters, good attitudes, take time off sick when they need it but keep you updated and seem genuinely keen to return when they are ready. Then you have those, that always have something of some sort, work feels like an inconvenience, like they are doing you a favour for turning up. The first group are the ones most likely to get loads of flex from me and when they need some last minute leave or an early finish or extra wfh day.

Mental health is as important as physical health. That said I have had staff play the mental health card and brag to other colleagues that they are untouchable because they’ve gone on the sick for mental health. It’s hard to judge because sometimes the people who appear to be holding it together are the ones struggling the most so as long as they’ve put a sick paper in I tend to give them the benefit of doubt because it’s not my place to diagnose who’s genuine and who’s faking.

Yes they did 😡 and I got rid of both of them asap.
But the staff who are genuinely ill always got all the support they needed to get them back to work and in a role that doesn't impact their MH. Its the piss takers who get the sack

Thank you all for your replies. You've helped to put my mind at rest. It was my manager who suggested I go off on leave as he asked how I was as I've been not myself lately and I broke down as I was feeling suicidal. I'm doing things to help myself such as getting out for walks, I've been to my GP and I'm on anti depressants now. In work, I work very hard and I think I'm well respected so hopefully no one will think badly of me, but I do worry a lot.

I was a manager for nearly 3 years. I was really supportive of those struggling with their mental health, less so with those who played the system and had frequent short term sickness for vague reasons.

I’m NHS so sickness management policy is really quite poor to navigate as a manager for those who know how to play the system and it creates so much work!

I had 6 weeks leave when my dbro died and my team were really supportive of that. My manager less so but that wasn’t unexpected and I’d already handed in my notice because of a lack of support.

Horrible horrible post.

One in four suffer mental health issues in UK every year, and Britain is 2nd lowest in terms of mental health.

How can anyone be so ignorant?

That’s sort of the issue though. Someone with the flu may take a few days, someone with a note for mental health could take a few months or longer, and the only “proof” you could ever ask for they can easily get, they just pop into the GP and ask for their note to be extended. How easy it is to get a sick note is a symptom really of how much the NHS is struggling, particularly regarding MH, huge waiting lists for talking therapy/actual help so a sick note/antidepressants are the quick hit the GP can just pass out.

The NHS website literally defines a migraine as a really bad headache and advises you to take paracetamol or ibuprofen. I’m sure you know there are different types of migraines, some range from lasting a couple of hours to a couple of days.

But you know exactly what I meant by using this as a loose example, which was used to show that you can’t judge someone’s illness by your own biased perception. Kind of what you’ve done here tbh.

The team should be told that x is off, the expected duration and how work will be reallocated. They shouldn’t be told that Anne is off to adjust to new medication for her bipolar disorder anymore than they’d be told that Sally has an infected cyst on her vulva. A team can function perfectly well without knowing the confidential details of the other members’ health and any manager divulging it could be rightly disciplined!

Having gone off with mental ill health myself I would be empathetic and understanding

Youve obviously never had severe mental health issues.

If you'd rather be busy and you can work then your point is moot.

If you have a serious mental health issue then you likely can't work it's nothing to do with toxic work colleagues and it's not like a cold you can get over in a day, or a touch of the blues that keeping busy will see you through.

No different to any physical health condition.

Please tell me you are not really a manager.

That’s awful

I did c. 30 years as an over achiever, reliable and hardworking. Then what felt like overnight I lost all motivation. I hated it. I just couldn't make myself care about work or perform well in a role I didn't care about.

I changed my job believing that to be the problem, but it was no better. Eventually I decided to retire, but I do think now maybe I should have treated it as a mental health problem and taken some time off.

Edited to add the point I originally intended to make! I guess I will have appeared workshy to collegues, I had no "reason" for being unwell, but there was physically and mentally nothing I could do about it. Now I'm retired I still have the same difficulties getting anything done, but it only affects me now. TBH I think Im burnt out.

I'm a social work manager so MH related and workplace stress absence is relatively common. Every SW in my team who has had to take MH related leave has had major issues going on at home at the same time and this has led to them not functioning at work - they have nothing but my support. Having said that there are a very small number of social workers who take MH related sick leave simply because the demands of the job are too much. The MH impacts are real, but the issue is the worker's unsuitedness to the work. Those workers are a headache and a PITA and nobody is very sympathetic if I'm completely (and anonymously) honest. If the work makes you ill, do something else.

I’ve been both the manager with team members off with MH issues and the employee off as a result of burnt out/anxiety/depression. I’ve also been in a small team with a colleague off sick regularly due to their MH. My day job currently is for a trade union and I have a huge number of cases supporting members absent or struggling at work due to MH issues. So seen this from lots of perspectives.

Being open and honest about what the issues are, whether they are work related or personal is so important to getting support at work. And always better to be off and take time to get well and ready to return to work and maintain being at work, than have lots of short term absences. In my experience (both public and private sector) employers are more likely to be sympathetic to long term absence.

Take your time to get well @CarrotCrusader

Im finding more and more people are going off citing normal and common life stresses as MH, anxiety etc.

Latest one is someone off for 6 weeks with anxiety because I flagged up they made a mistake that cost the business £5k and I arranged for more training on the system. Apparantly this has triggered "severe anxiety" even though I didnt even bollock them as £5k was small fry in terms of the project cost.

Not impressed at all and red flag is up and ill be taking the first opportunity to manage them out.

So it depends for me what the issue is.

I’ve worked with people who were genuinely suffering from MH problems, and I’ve worked with people who were patently lazy shysters leaning on MH as a reason to not do a job but keep the job. In my experience the second group is bigger than the first.

The usual way to deal with sickness game-players is to make them redundant from a pool using a package of criteria, to minimise the chances of a tribunal claim for disability discrimination.

That sounds terrifying for you and completely debilitating. I'm sorry you went through that. I hope you're in a much better place now.

It’s very common place in my team - social work.
I think or certainly get the impression that managers are accepting and understanding because there is a high burn out rate and they need happy healthy staff.

Well done. You got your controversial, goady comment in first 👏

It's awful isn't it how mental illness is being weaponised by the shirkers. This is why no matter how bad I feel (suicidal at points , I pray I never experience those feelings again ) I've never ever been sick from work because of it and have never told anybody. People like this shirkers have now adopted "mental health" and demonised it for the real sufferers (so we all stay quiet)