Can an employee on maternity leave be signed off sick.....

[fizzymilk]

Can an employee on maternity leave be signed off sick if they have mental stress and depression? The person in question is close to having a nervous breakdown due to personal circumstances couple with constant harassment by the company about redundancy. The person did raise this with the company with HR and management and was laughed at (by phone.)one example the senior HR manager said about persons concern about constant harassment on maternity leave-"we dont care about your issues, from our side we are building a paper trail against you so you can either be with us or not" In writing - they are playing politics for example saying that the person did reply to their previous correspondance when in fact they did. doesnt matter how many times the person clarifies this in writing and by phone- they write the same thing sayining that the person is being akward for not keeping in touch whilst ignoring concerns raised by the person about their treatment etc

back to the main point can the person be just signed off working whilst on maternity leave, i mean not get sick pay just signed off from working?

I do not think you can be - the person is already not attending work. Maternity leave offers protections in redundancy situations, whereas short term sickleave does not. And avoiding the issues at work won't help in the long run.

What correspondence is actually missing? Your friend may need to use recorded delivery (or deliver by hand and get it signed for).

And what other issues are being addressed in the correspondence? Is it at all possible your friend is being obtuse, and is not actually dealing with the main points? You can make someone redundant from maternity leave despite the extra protections, something not uncommon (sadly) these days with so many companies genuinely downsizing or relocating. If your friend misunderstands this, and is trying to insist she is employed come what may, then her employer's responses might become less patient.

Is she a union member?

No you can't. You're either on maternity leave or off sick. Going onto sick leage will automatically end maternity leave which if there are redundancies in the offing it is more prudent to be on maternity leave when then happens because women on mat leave have additional employment rights requiring them to be redeployed where possible. If when your friend is due to return from work she is not well enough to be there she can go sick then. Ie straight from maternity leave to sick leave without setting foot in the office.

If your friend is having issues at work I suggest she starts documenting everything in a diary. Date and time of incident, who was there, who said/did whatever. I would also suggest only corresponding in writing (ie by email/signed for letter) and if she has legitimate grounds for complaint raising a grievance.

It's worth noting there is no requirement for an employee to keep in touch with an employer during maternity leave. There is a requirement for employers to pass on key information and invite the employee to participate in any statutory consultations - but they cannot insist the employee does and where the employee chooses not to the key information can be written down and mailed to the employee.

It sounds like your friend may benefit from some proper advice specific to her situation. Has she tried her Union, CAB or ACAS? Or an employment lawyer?

Sorry for typos and lack of punctuation. Am on iPhone and keep losing posts so didn't preview

I was in redundancy circumstances while in mat leave, and they weren't keeping in touch with me about changes, employee rep meetings etc. ACAS were beyond useless, but someone recommended maternityaction.org. Might a worth a try.

KM has it in a nutshell.

I would say that 'constant harassment about redundancy' sounds really odd. What is this constant harassment? If there is a redundancy situation and a restructure it may be very important that they know for example if your friend wants part time working or wants to work in X dept or Y dept on her return. That would be normal. Doesn't mean your friend needs to actually respond to any of this (though it may be in her interests to do so).

It would also be very normal to say something like "we have redundancies, it is very important that we do everything by the book, we are doing it because we have to and even if you wanted us to leave you alone we need to follow our processes because we need to show that we have taken everything into account". Now, I can imagine a harassed HR manager saying that to your friend, without there being any implied subtext or threat.

Saying all of that, there is nothing to stop the friend from writing to the company to indicate that she is unable to continue all the informal correspondence and that she can only deal with them in writing from this point onwards. That makes it far easier to monitor all the she said/he said stuff.

Whilst on maternity leave the employer can't bother the employee about usual workstuff, however it is their duty to keep her informed about the redundancy situation.