Off sick for years

[BoredandStuck]

Someone I work with has been off work sick for over two and a half years now. That seems a really long time without them being sacked or let go. Has anyone else come across anything similar or longer?

I don’t believe there is anything stopping them “replacing” the employee who is on long term sick leave, and the income protection insurance is paying out. We have people at work who have been on LTS for between 3-10 years and their roles have all been backfilled, no different to if they had got another job elsewhere. Should they ever wish to return, we’d just have to manage that case by case.

Are you getting trouble from management because work is remaining undone? Are you having to do unpaid overtime? missing breaks? Basically how is this affecting you?

This is entirely wrong. It’s perfectly lawful to sack someone for being incapable for work due to ill health. If they have a disability it does place burdens on the employer to make reasonable adjustments and to ensure the dismissal is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim. The thing about a job that seems to surprise some people that there is an expectation you’re actually expected to, you know, turn up and work.

There is an exception where income protection policies are involved which is what I expect is going on here.

Yes, a term of endearment, similar to ‘hun’

“We are all covering her hours and working so bloody hard”

why though? It’s not your problem to solve. Speak to your managers and say you’re not doing it anymore. Why work when you don’t need to be? It’s a company problem

this. Which is why I asked what effect this was having on the OP

Yep. Public sector. Someone I job share with. It will be two years this month.

Prior to that she would go off sick the same time every year until her sick pay dropped and then she would return. When she was in work she would do very, very little. Claim lots of reasons why she couldn't do XYZ. Had a ridiculous amount of adjustments. And yes, it does impact on the rest of team because we have to pick up the slack.

The very little work she did actually do was poor quality, full of errors that I usually then had to deal with. And when she made mistakes she would usually blame me. I ended up keeping a log of everything I did to ensure I couldn't be held accountable for her shit.

She's an absolute piss taker. I know Mumsnet would be all "oh you should be kind because she's unwell" but that's bullshit. If you can't do the job without taking months off at a time, even with every adjustment under the sun, then you should have the integrity to quit instead of assuming your team mates will pick up your slack.

If someone is off on long term sick you usually can reasonably judge that it's going to be long enough to need cover.

People on these threads all assume that everyone works in the public sector or large firms where absence can be absorbed.

Ime the insurance companies do investigate the long-term sick. An employee I had was found to have a stall at a craft market - they were sacked.

I don’t think that’s the right question though. It doesn’t need to have any impact on the OP. If she chooses to do extra work, either responding to pressure or feeling obliged, that’s a different sort of impact.

you’re indicating it’s not a problem unless it’s impacting the Op. but it’s not a problem at all, if it impacts her that’s for her to own.

Presumably the team have been covering that work for 2.5 years, why backfill now?

It's not hard to let someone go for being ill, no. Or rather, you can't fire someone just for being ill, but you can if they are not able to fulfil the terms of their contract.

There are steps you have to take, morally and legally, to ensure you've done everything you can to support the ill person back into work and a position where they can fulfil their contract, including making reasonable adjustments to their hours, work station and work location - note 'reasonable', if it isn't reasonable the employer doesn't have to offer.

But it's not hard.

If your company has let things go on for this long, they're either very slack, very compassionate to their personal circumstances, they're ill BECAUSE of their job and they want to avoid a tribunal, or they're very confident that your colleague will be able to return to work and it's worth waiting for because he or she is brilliant at their job.

Doubly crafty!

So lunch with sister is ok?

Thats awful

👊🏽

Why would it not be?

We don't know the nature of the sick employee's health condition but here's a hell of a difference between an hour in a restaurant and having work thrown at you full on.

I work with someone who is generally off sick for 3 days out of the 4 she works, this has been going on for at least 6 years. When she does work it will be from home doing some admin.
We are left to pick up her caseload which means travelling another 30 miles to her area on top of our own work. The team are fed up with it but management are doing nothing to backfill.

I'm off sick myself this week, first time in over 2 years but i'm going to extend it to next week as i'm completely burn out picking up extra work for people who aren't capable of doing the job.

If the insurance is paying the employees wages then the company should be able to employ someone on a temporary basis. You could suggest they offer a temporary contract until the person gives notice to come back.

In local government we had someone who was continually going off sick for periods of weeks, then months, then was medically retired after 6 months full and 6 months half pay. Of course it impacted others in the interim as they did not take on any cover. Those of us who were left made a tacit agreement to let the extra work slide and pile up. We did our hours but nothing extra. We never spoke about it openly to management in terms of X being off. When management complained we pointed out that we were under staffed and needed more resources. Eventually they hired a temp.

Of course no-one expects someone to just stay inside the house, and not move out of it, like being under house arrest, but there has to be limits. Going out to lunch with people, and bobbing in and out of the workplace, laughing and joking and saying people won't be seeing her for a while is taking the piss. One poster on here said someone who had been on sick at her place for a year or so, had a stall going on the market, as well as taking full sick pay off work.

I knew a man who was off sick for 8-9 months (some 7 years ago) and in that time he went to the Carribean with his wife for 3 weeks, and also went to several parties, and many day trips to theme parks and to the beach.

I mean, some people are genuinely very ill, and do need to be off, but it's very naive to think or assume that no-one ever swings the lead!

Never done and elevenerife one on mumsnet before but….when I joined a large pharmaceutical company in 2002, the head of a small department was already signed off with stress. He was still off, with stress, 12 YEARS later when I left the company.
it was a department of 3 and his direct report had to take on so much extra she got totally burnt out. The worst thing was one year she was asked to drop off his annual salary letter (as the new director was both lazy and a bit stupid) And this guy had got a bigger pay rise than her. That was when she finally quit

Other posters have said most of the helpful things about company income protection insurance and how it works. I agree the issue is management not covering the role but even this might be complex in ways you aren't aware.

If she has an illness or injury that she will hopefully recover from but is hard to predict so return seems to be imminent and then she relapses, then that makes it hard for managers to plan for cover. Someone at my work has had cancer, treatment was successful but the treatment itself has been extremely draining on her physical health and she's also suffering the mental impact of what happened - she has three quite young children so she must have been terrified at the thought of them without a mother. So there seem to have been various discussions about a phased return but then she just isn't up to it. I will add that she is the wife of someone else very senior in the firm so that probably had some bearing, rightly or wrongly, on keeping her role open.

In my previous firm someone else was off long term with a spinal injury. This went on for over 3 years too. What wasn't commonly known was that she had alleged the injury was as a result of workplace conditions so management had to tread very carefully. They did eventually terminate her employment on capability grounds and sure enough she then made an injury/EL claim.

(I've changed some details of the above people to keep things anonymous.)

Another factor might be how specialised the role is. If it requires particular knowledge, skills and experience then it can be extremely difficult to find the right person who is willing to take on a temporary role. But recruiting a new permanent member of staff then risks over manning/redundancy if the original person comes back. I've seen that happen twice and it wasn't pretty.

I also wanted to add that if sick pay has run out and/or even if the person is being paid from income cover insurance, that doesn't mean there is nil cost to the employer. There are still costs attached - the person will still accrue holiday and additional redundancy years. (Not sure if employer still has to pay NI and pension - perhaps other posters will know. ) Those costs will need to be added to the cost of recruiting cover or a new permanent member of staff and sometimes a budget won't stretch far enough.

All you can do is push back on management regarding the workload. Work to rule? Is that a possibility?

I had a colleague at the council who would be off for 6 months, come in for a month or two and do it again (you used to be able to do that).
When the rules changed, it became a rolling year and HR started to apply pressure, he quit. He was incredibly lazy. His reason for being off was stress from managers but basically he could do what he liked. He then actually died a few months later of cancer so would have been better off in work.

i worked somewhere a guy had been off for 3 years, the HR manager kept changing so no one would tackle him. The opinion was it was so he could be on benefits with no pressure to work.

They are not oblivious to the situation @BoredandStuck, they have procedures. You raising a question or two isn’t going to have an effect on your colleagues rights.