Managing depressed employee - what will help?

[YowMyHead]

Hi all, I’d love ideas/advice/personal experiences regarding what I can do to help an employee who seems to be going through a low patch...

I’m about 1 year into a new company, and manage a small team - I’m relatively inexperienced in line management. We are all working from home due to pandemic

I’ve noticed one of my direct reports seems low/depressed, actually my own boss asked how she was and that brought it to my attention

• no longer working a full day
• less output/ work lower quality than usual
• seems low energy/not usual self
• change to usual appearance (greasy hair etc)
• irritable/argumentative

I think reasons are personal/family stress, and just too much 2020 as far as I can tell! Her partner has also lost his job. Normally she’s a superstar/high performer, and my only issue is she’s over competitive (esp vs me, her boss)

We work for a big multi national which has various programmes to support wellbeing/mental health

My question: I’d say this has been going on since maybe mid Dec but more noticeable last few weeks

My current tack:

• give a bit of space / not pile on pressure
• show compassion/relatability
• talk a lot about mental health support in company to whole team (to avoid singling out)

I’d like to understand what might help (I think it’s very understandable!), how to get performance back if possible, and sad to say, where I need to start worrying about covering my own butt if performance really slides

This is not a company where people take sick leave/get signed off, and this person is more the type to pretend everything is perfect

Please can anyone share any suggestions of what I can do to help - personally, and to stop performance sliding downhill:what has worked, and anything that has felt unhelpful

As of now, I plan to tell my own line Mgr that I have a concern and will be monitoring it... no idea what comes after that!

Maybe ask if she wants to take a few days holiday if she's struggling to keep all the plates spinning.

From the other side of it I think its good of you to acknowledge that she is experienced. I had a job a few years back where we were without a department manager for a few months. I and one other lady who were the more experienced in the team divided the managerial tasks between us as the department was pretty easy to divide down the middle.

She did rotas, payroll etc while I took over the more day to day stuff like delegating work among the rest of the team, organising breaks, maintaining machinery and reordering stock etc. Then this new manager came in sat us down and handed out a list of basic tasks that needed completing daily.

This got our backs up a bit as we had been running an 8 person + manager dept between 5 of us, one of whom only worked one day a week and really didn't need to be told that the displays needed dusting more often. It made us defensive right off the bat as quite frankly we had shit miracles to keep that department running.

Its difficult to come in as a new manager on an established dept and not tread on toes, especially when the staff have been running things solo and possibly getting no thanks for it. I think maybe more recognition for things she does well and phrase it more along the lines of her not seeming her usual efficient self and is there anything you can do to help?

I've been this employee. Still am, to a degree. Similar circumstances with a big multinational company too.

In my case, my issues ran (run) a little deeper than situational depression, but the events of 2020 made all the scaffolding and routine that helped me get by in previous years come crashing down. Imposter syndrome, perfectionism, job dissatisfaction, anxiety and panic disorder, lifelong concentration and time-management issues, a sense of self-loathing about my tanking performance at work, everyone being sad and angry at home, and physical depression symptoms (jet-lag style exhaustion out of nowhere) all kind of whacked me upside the head last year. It was bad.

I used our private health cover's direct mental health line and got referred to local therapists very quickly--quicker than my previous experience on NHS (which had a brilliant therapist too, but a much much longer wait time). Meanwhile, it took management a while to figure out how to help. My former line manager was so hands-off that he wouldn't even do our performance reviews. The manager overseeing our dept QA threatened to recommend firing me (and he copied several other managers in his emails telling me so); he didn't realise I might be struggling badly with my mental health until I confessed through tears in a late-night email (that was a bad freaking night at my desk...). And then he told me in a follow up reply that the company didn't want to lose me...

The best manager of the lot became my line manager. He spoke to me calmly, never acted awkward that I was upset, and helped me understand I wasn't the only one in the dept struggling (I was very much under that impression until then because of company culture). He helped me reorganise my workload when I was just about ready to quit. No shaming language about performance. No knocking back my concerns about how the department was being run, either: he found a way to feed my observations up the chain, as far as I know. And for now, he acts as a buffer between me and the QA guy.

If your direct report been a high performer in the past, then she probably knows she's slipping, and she may well hate herself for it, especially if she's competitive. And that self-loathing may be making things much worse. Things would have been a lot less shitty and dramatic for me of any of the managers had led a conversation with, "Are you ok?"

You've had a lot of great advice OP and there are lot of PP on here who I think I'd like to report to!

One thing that occurred to me regarding her recent work not being up to her last standard, rather that starting the conversation by stating it was below par, maybe ask her what she thought of it, was it challenging, too easy, had she enjoyed it etc. It may start a conversation where she acknowledges it wasn't quite good enough and you can dig a little deeper in the supportive way people have suggested about what you can do to help her at the moment.

Group dynamics are different but my team has a coffee call at 9:30 every day. Turn up if you like (or don't have another call) or don't, noone judges, but it's an opportunity to just check in with others.

Thank you @creasedjeans, @nothingcanhurtmewithmyeyesshut, @Preech and @didireallysaythat: you all raise really helpful points

@creased : I like the tactics you suggest . Tbh, because of the situation I’ve had a general check in with the team every Monday since I started in lockdown 1 - how was weekend etc, to understand mood,/ build trust and interaction etc, so I hope the groundwork is already set (this is as well as 121s and often a ‘great week, have a good weekend’ catch up on Thu/Fri too

@preech : sorry to hear your story, tbh, I’ve been that employee myself too, which is why I’m trying to understand/help. It sounds like your company responded well once they addressed it as mental health vs performance... I also think my DRs issues are bigger than pandemic, but this situation is taking away some coping mechanisms

@did I - I think asking her to self reflect will be a helpful tact, honestly I don’t know if she is not bothering because she thinks the work is a waste of time...

At did I ... we have a UK based team call 1 evening a week (at 5/6) - social chat mostly (it’s my peers, not my teams). I might actually suggest we run more of that in our team AND suggest to a colleague in her country that it might be a good routine for people... thanks for helping me think of it

You've had most of what id suggest already OP - some great advice on this thread!
In light of that, my input is to have the 'are you okay?' conversation seperate to the 'performance' one as she might leap into defence mode or become more stressed if she thinks the only reason you're speaking to her about it is because you're not happy with the standard of work.
This is also a way of getting round your manager thinking you're being soft - but will only work if you tell your boss that this is the spproach you are taking beforehand. It might not work in your company culture but thought it was worth suggesting anyway!

You sound like you are trying to do the right thing.

Bluntly, as a new manager sickness absence and underperformance can be really tricky to manage for the first time. Don't be afraid to call this out to your line management as a development area you want to work on.

Echo others' suggestions to do your prep, find out what support is available for you both, have an open but direct conversation and don't skirt around the issue trying to be kind - it would do neither of you any favours.

I am an NHS GP and I also have bipolar disorder (HR is aware but my manager is not because of the stigma and prejudice associated with it, and the fact that medicine is also a very macho environment). I’ve also had a number of very difficult hugely stressful issues in my personal life. So I’ve been on the receiving end of this sort of conversation once or twice about underperformance when struggling with my mental health (I still maintain that there expectations of workload etc were always ridiculous and unrealistic in the first place rather than my actually underperforming as such and so that’s one thing you maybe ought to look at).

Long-term I would say you need to do your bit to change the workplace macho culture where nobody ever admits to being ill or takes time off, this is really unhealthy and actually not good for employers as well as employees in the long term as people cover things up until breaking point and it then takes longer to get back to normal. I’d love nothing more than to work somewhere I could disclose my condition without fear of jusgement. It would be a billion times easier if I could explain that I need to take a day or two off at short notice as my mental health is starting to dip for example. But medicine and the NHS is not a place to admit weakness currently (and never has been) sadly. I hope I’ll see this change in my lifetime.

What has helped me is when my managers have realised that I’m not myself at an early stage and addressed it directly with me in a really genuinely compassionate way (as in I actually believe they give a shit about me as a person and whether I’m about to kill myself as opposed to ticking a box to cover their own arses). They have said something like “Look we know you’re going through a difficult time at home at the moment and you don’t seem quite your usual self (maybe say some of the things you’ve noticed - not sure I’d bring appearance into it though 😬), we are worried about you and want to make sure that your work-life balance isn’t getting out of control”. Specifically telling me that they aren’t oblivious to the issue but that they aren’t instantly going to fire me is helpful. Specifically saying to me “Do you think you need to take a couple of weeks off sick?” and reassuring me that this won’t be the end of the world as far as they’re concerned and encouraging me that taking a shorter time off now if needed to avoid needing to take longer time off in the future is also helpful. Of course you have to have the workplace culture to back that up, there’s no point saying it won’t count against them to have taken time off sick if it absolutely will and you both know it. It may be hard for you to come across as genuine if you have had tension in the past so I’d maybe acknowledge that and say that despite that you still don’t like to see an employee finding life so tough or something.

I honestly think I’d start by addressing it purely from a mental health perspective rather than a performance perspective. Most high performing people know full well when their performance isn’t up to their usual standard, I certainly did, and when you are depressed, you can feel very guilty and ashamed about that and confirming to a depressed person that “yes you are completely shit at your job and we’re about to fire you” (which is likely what they’ll hear however you put it) funnily enough doesn’t lead to better performance. I do understand that poor performance needs addressed, especially if they are avoiding taking time off sick when they really ought to, but I would say it sounds like this person is usually a very solid employee and I suspect if her mental health improves then her performance willl follow so focus on that first and maybe only bring up performance at a later date if she is in complete denial about the problem and won’t take any steps to address it or if those steps are not bearing any fruit 6 weeks or so down the line. And work out if this is how you really do feel about her because you said that but then later on you’ve said you wonder if she just isn’t bothering with the work... so which is it? I’d suggest it’s unlikely she’s just suddenly turned into a lazy person...

I would ask if there are particular issues causing them stress at work and don’t dismiss it and gaslight them if they do raise issues. This is one of the most damaging things that has ever been done to me in my life (and I’ve been through domestic abuse). In my case I raised valid concerns about workload and too much work being delegated to me by superiors which was then twisted into my not being efficient/not having good time management/not coping as my superiors could cope just fine (well yes because they were passing most of their work on to me but I didn’t have someone to delegate to). The other thing that was super unhelpful was that one of these wonderful superiors was then nominated to mentor me and “show me how it’s done” which of course just meant that I had an hour less every week than I had previously when they identified me as struggling, to get the still-crazy workload done. Being micro-managed was also super unhelpful and just increased my stress levels, and that includes people “helpfully” reminding you for your own good that you shouldn’t be here past home time/on your day off (when you still have an unmanageable workload that’s also expected to get done). Completely pissed me off because obviously I don’t WANT to be at work on my day off but they’ve just told me they’re not happy with my performance FFS what do they expect?! Of course I’m going to work myself into the ground to try and keep them happy, destroying my mental health while I do it. I’d completely panic if I had a patient that came in and burst into tears on me because I knew others are watching the clock to see if I’m spending too long with them and my heart would just sink when they started crying because I’d be thinking come on I don’t have time for this!! I’m being specifically watched to see how many people I get in and out the door today and how quickly... You’re going to get me fired! Which then made me feel like a terrible uncaring Doctor. And made me even MORE stressed. And then the patients would say thing like “you’re the only doctor that actually listens here, please don’t ever leave” and I’d be thinking well I might not have a choice and it’s previsely because I do take the extra time to listen which is apparently time inefficient of me... anyway!

You sound like a good manager who genuinely wants to help and genuinely values this employee despite the slightly adversarial relationship. Definitely remind her of this - your phrase that she “has credit in the bank” from past work would be a good one to use. Of course every good manager can get made into a manager from hell by the manager’s own worries about how they will come across to their higher ups and whether they’ve been tough enough etc. Honestly I really think you get more from an employee in the long term by treating them as human beings with feelings too. I think there is a time and place for being tough down the line if a kind and empathetic approach focusing on mental wellbeing rather than performance initially does not give results (and bear in mind mental health issues generally take weeks to months for significant improvement to occur not days). I would also leave this all quite informal at first but gradually make it more formal if you’re not seeing things improve and put what you’ve discussed in an email so there is a paper trail of what’s been said etc. But be fair and make sure it’s a reflection of what’s actually been said and agree unlike one place I worked. And if there is a formal meeting that’s part of a disciplinary type process or similar then make sure they are made fully aware that it is a formal meeting and not just a “chat” and have a chance to bring their own representation to a meeting etc. I’d also say don’t tell someone you want to meet them (or I guess Zoom them or whatever) “for a chat” next week or in two days etc as someone like me just sits in a state of anxiety and fear and thinks they are going to be fired etc. Just ask them to speak to you then and there if it is truly just a casual checking in type chat. Or tell them that you want to meet them in a week for a “performance review meeting” if that’s really what’s going on etc. Sure I’d be scared but I need to be in the circumstances and at least it doesn’t pretend to be something it isn’t and allows time to prepare for the meeting.

I understand that mental health and performance issues can coincide of course but I would try to keep them separate and I would encourage you to make it all about their mental health at least in the first instance. The best manager I ever had handled it like that and said “look I can see you just need a break at the minute, we really value you as an employee but even more so as a person and we want you to be ok, why not just take a couple of weeks off sick to get back on your feet, nobody will think any the less of you and we can manage without you ok”. I felt like I had his “permission” to take time off and so I did and then I was absolutely fine as he’d intervened at an early stage. So no need to move on to a performance management stage of things - which I’m sure he would have done if I hadn’t been able to pull my socks up then, and he’s have had a right to as well.

Sorry this has been a really long post but thought it might be valuable to hear from personal experience of being on the other side of this. Good luck!

You sound like a nice person But being a good manager is not about being a nice person it’s about clarity and consistency and I think that’s why you’re posting – you’re aware of your history with her potentially clouding your judgement about what to say and do a particular times

@NotJackieWeaver: yes, I don’t want to be either too harsh (because of being sometimes annoyed by her behaviour) or afraid to tackle things head on .,,

And don't make it about Covid - it could be a whole range of things that has caused it - give her the space to define it in her own terms. DD is suffering from anxiety she gets the absolute rage when people mention Covid as a contributory factor - she felt like this before Covid and she feels that mentioning how she feels with Covid in the same sentence almost deminshes her feelings.

You do need to speak to her directly. I wouldn't raise it by offering your conclusions about her behaviour (that you think she's down or depressed) but by saying "I've noticed... " and letting her comment.

You're not qualified to spot depression (or to counsel someone through it), what you've noticed is a change in behaviour and performance so that is what you mention. Without the speculation on what its cause might be.

Then depending on her response you remind her of the EAP, suggest she make an appointment to see her doctor, or set performance goals.

Then you follow up with her to check in about whether she has sought help, review performance, consider occupational health referrals and reasonable adjustments, etc.

You can't manage an individual's issues by dancing vaguely around the subject in group discussions. It's not effective or fair.

It’s good that you recognise the issue OP. That has to be the first step towards handling things well. Good luck.

“@NotJackieWeaver: yes, I don’t want to be either too harsh (because of being sometimes annoyed by her behaviour) or afraid to tackle things head on .,,