Employer refusing to reduce my hours per Occ Health suggestion, can I do anything?

[Chronicilly]

Hi,

Sorry in advance for the long post! I work for a university in the UK. I declared my disability to them when I applied, and I’ve been there now for just over 2 years.

They have been good with reasonable adjustments; they let me compress my hours into 4 days, got me a suitable chair&equipment etc.

I only do 17.5hours and it’s a desk-based job. Last year I had a lot of problems in terms of my pain being completely out of control, and due to NHS screw ups it took months and months and months for me to get the medication I needed. My pain flared up massively at the end of October and I had to go off sick, and am now on long term sick.

I had had a lot of absences up to that point; in a 6 month period I’d had about 40 days off where my pain was too bad for me to come in. I also had an injury to my foot which resulted in a 3 week absence earlier in the year.

I have attended several management review meetings and I go unaccompanied. I am not a member of a union. I saw Occupational Health again recently and we agreed that I was fit to go back to work on amended hours of 12 hours a week for a period of 6 months, after which my hours would be re-assessed.

I met with my employer today and they say their are unable to accommodate this. The best they can offer is an 8 week phased return, 5 weeks of which will be my annual leave, after which I would need to use my full hours.

I feel very strongly that I’m unable to do those hours; I was struggling already which is why I’d had so much time off prior to my long absence, and I’m worse now than I was then.

I know they are expected to make reasonable adjustments, and up to now they have. They say that they can’t accommodate 12hours because of business needs, they wouldn’t be able to recruit someone to do the other 5.5 hours and they are understaffed and have other staff members wanting to reduce their hours.

I don’t really know what to do. If I don’t agree to go back on my full hours they will send me to a Capability hearing where basically I can be dismissed on the grounds that I am incapable of doing my job. Legally, is there anything I can do here? I don’t really understand how, when they are understaffed, they can’t recruit someone to do say, 23 hours so together we make a full person, as they will need to hire more staff anyway. I’m certainly not indispensable, it’s a fairly basic job but there are some complex elements that only 3 of us can do. One of them is leaving in 2 weeks and if I go as well that leaves only one person. It seems really shortsighted of them to not agree to my amended hours for this reason.

Have you spoken to ACAS? It sounds like they’re being reasonable though - they can refuse your request if it doesn’t suit business needs.

Sorry to hear about the health issues OP, pain is so exhausting to deal with on a daily basis and if you haven't dealt with it it's hard to understand just how exhausting it is.

It's not as easy as saying just to get a person for 23 hours though, Universities have a myriad of Committees to go through to get a post approved and they'll have approval for your post and it's FTE, but not the 23 hours. Someone else leaving doesn't strengthen your case unfortunately. Having said that (and I know you said that your job has complex elements that only a very limited number of people can do) Universities are major employers with very large numbers of staff. Is there any other role in the organisation that could suit the 12 hour requirement (because I think it would be best for you rather than attempting to go back to your previous role/hours)?

Sorry OP, didn’t mean to be so curt. I have issues with chronic pain myself and totally get how difficult it is. Unfortunately there are only so many roads to go down re pain control and sadly a lot of the time they just don’t wkrk.

Do have a chat with acas though, they’ll be able to advise you. My understanding is yes, if you cannot do the job they can dismiss you.

Hi CotswoldStrife,

Yes, I do know that. ATM though they have 7/12 staff members who all do the same role, me being what would be the 8th. Most of those people are on full FTE, except for me and another. So they're already drastically understaffed and at some point will need to recruit for those missing posts. So logically they could hire someone on 17.5 hours to replace me, then one of the 35hrs could be a job share with someone else making up those missing hours. I know it's complex hiring people in unis, I work in HR, but I feel like with so many positions open there's room for some flexibility

Hi Lobsterface,

I haven't spoken to ACAS but I will do. I know they can not accept my request and dismiss me, I just struggle to see how, when the team currently is 7/12 people, they can say they can't accommodate 12 hours. Surely 12 is better than zero?! The area of my team that I work in takes a long time to learn, there are loads of processes and systems to get to grips with (I work in HR, I basically add new employees onto our system, take leaving employees off, process maternity leave and (ironically) sick leave etc, and it takes a long time become fully competent in that area. There are 3 of us that can do everything, one of whom is leaving, 2 that can do most, and several others that can do bits and pieces, but there are also 2 other areas that need staffing.

Sorry to hear you are struggling

I think they are well within their rights legally. You have been off for the last 6 months and in the 6 months prior had and average of 1.5days off sick per week, every week.

So in the last 12 months you have worked around 25% of the time you were supposed to. That's grounds for saying the job doesn't match your capability. I would think that would be classed as more than reasonable adjustment

Argh that's a depressing statistic Umizoomi! Thanks for your feedback!

I did figure this was going to be the case, but I really didn't want to lose this job. I'm pretty young and very limited in what I can do, and I think I'll find it really difficult to get a job that fits what I'm capable of. And I've really struggled mentally with being out of work, so facing an indefinite future of that is pretty depressing

I hope things work out

Could you work from home ?

Unfortunately, it does sound like a capability issue.

Their suggest on a phased return sounds quite accommodating. Do you have a reason to think your ability to attend won’t improve over that time?

As others have said- try ACAS. But given they have already allowed 4 days instead of 5, so you were doing less hours per days, but more days, and now you are requesting 5.5 less hours which Boone else is currently able/wants to pick up. They’ve managed without you for several months. I get your perspective- you at 12 hours is better than nothing- but you can’t even guarantee that given the hanging nature of your disability. It sounds like they have really tried to accomodate you, but need someone who can actually fulfill the role consistently, not risk someone who has never been consistent, despite the arrangements they’ve already agreed to to try and accommodate you and your disability

Is it worth at least trying the phased return?

To answer your queries:

I can’t work from home with this role. It involves access to a system that has all info about all employees and they can’t grant access to that outside the office. And I literally cannot do the job without it.

In terms of trying the phased return, I know I wouldn’t improve because that’s not really how the condition I have works. I was struggling with my full hours before I went off sick, hence the spotty attendance record, and I am iller now than I was then. I’ve run through all possible medications I can take, the most effective one no GP will increase, no one will give me stronger painkillers and I have no other options. The Occ Health doctor actually said to me “I’m surprised you’re even awake with what you’re on”. I’m not even sure I can manage 12 but I really wanted to try.

And I doubt very much they’ll replace me; they’ve had 2 vacancies for almost a year that they never recruited for, 2 people on secondment they haven’t brought temp staff in for, and they’ve lost half the management since I went off sick. It’s a bit of a mess of a department and that’s why I was surprised they wouldn’t want someone who knew how to do the job in even for a few hours. They will be struggling a lot as they were already struggling with workload before I went off.

Is your GP managing your pain medication? If you can get referred to a pain team they might be able to find something that helps.