Husband is ill and being treated badly

[Hopedun]

H has worked for his large multinational company for over 10 years. He has a role which I don't really understand but spends a lot of time doing calls and coaching to other staff in offices across the UK. He is the only one with his role in his site although there are 3 others across the UK.

He has stage 3 chronic kidney disease. His kidney function greatly improved to around 48% when everyone was told to WFH and his blood pressure which is very high also fell to normal levels. His high blood pressure is because of his CKD, he is on medication because of it.

His boss told him she expected him to be in the office three days a week last year so he started travelling in. In traffic this can take up to 90 minutes each way. He feels absolutely dreadful after doing this. Public transport would take even longer, over 2 hours so it isn't an option. This is all so he can sit on Teams calls to speak to people in other offices, in an office alone.

The hospital see him regularly and said his kidney function had fallen in six months to 23%. He can only put this down to the travelling. He asked for an occupational health referral and the doctor said in the report that he should not be required to attend the office weekly or even monthly. They should leave it to him to come in when he's well enough and his travel to work as well as having multiple tasks dumped on him was severely affecting his health.

He suffers with brain fog due to his condition and needs a bit of down time between leading calls and meetings so that he can get his focus back. His boss books him in for back to bag meetings which he can't cope with anymore.

He still had not had a meeting with his boss to discuss the findings of the OHS referral five weeks on so in his performance review last week, he asked if she had read and she said she had seen the email but hadn't opened it! He then spoke to his union rep who told him to book a meeting about it in her calendar which he has done.

During the performance review she said she was only marking him with a 2 instead of his usual top marking. He asked why as his is top site in the UK and he hits all performance indicators and she said he was not visible enough in the office.

Once his kidney function drops to 10% he will be extremely ill and needing dialysis. His doctors want him to avoid this for as long as possible as he is only early 40s.

Amy advice please? Sorry it's so long.

It really shouldn't be seen as confrontational to take a union rep to a meeting. I'm recently retired but was a senior HR manager and I always found having union reps present was a positive thing as they could support the staff member, ensure I understood what was going on, sometimes a stressed staff member can't get that across. I'd strongly advise him to take a union rep. If his manager won't accept the OH recommendations I think raising a grievance is a good idea, HR won't be happy with the manager as the next step could be constructive dismissal.

Good luck, I hope he gets it sorted.

Agree with most of this. However, the organisation needs to consider the reasonable adjustments the OH report makes, but they do not legally have to implement them if there is a strong business reason why not. However you say his job can be done from home, so it sounds like they would struggle to justify refusing this adjustment.

Sounds like a good outcome, OP. Is your DH happy with that?

Yes he's happy with it. We hope that long term they will allow him to drop a day at work for health reasons but this is good for the time being.

I’m post transplant thank god now, but for a long time it was being insinuated i was being lazy at work because i stopped working night shifts and very late evenings when my gfr dropped to 10… and I work for the NHS! Who you would think should get it. Thankfully I did keep working right up until the day of my transplant, I was getting up for work when they rang! I know what he’s doing through and it’s horrible.
It’s unlikely the big drop is due to travelling though, is that what his team said? Depending on the underlying cause there can be rapid changes.
I think maybe he needs to seek legal advice re his employers behaviour.
He probably will struggle with getting PIP if i’m honest, but it doesn’t hurt to try. You might be better joining one of the renal forums on facebook with people like me who really know about this stuff rather than mumsnet.

Glad you got your transplant, I hope you feel well now.
They put his drop in function down to the travel to work as his blood pressure increased with this too. When he was wfh full time with no trips to the office at all, his function increased and he felt well.

I was on a couple of kidney groups on Facebook but I found them scary to be honest. Every post was about something going wrong with a transplant or someone dying unexpectedly. I prefer to live in ignorance. My two sons will probably have genetic kidney issues too so it's even more scary when I think about the problems ahead for them. I need to think about my own mental health and not be stressing about everyone's health constantly.

OP, sounds like an acceptable outcome for the time being. I’d probably still look for somewhere closer to home or fully WFH. I don’t think you can prove commuting is causing drop in eGFR, though there’s a definite correlation there and sounds like a logical assumption. Do whatever is needed to keep the kidneys functioning best they can. Good luck.

Has he formally asked for a reasonable adjustment under the Equality Act 2010? And spelt out that this is what he is asking for? This really is discrimination.

And do a mandatory reconsideration for his PIP. Maybe with help from one of the organisations who do this.

Sorry, now RTFT and that is a decent result.

re the PIP application, it’s not just a case of being physically able to do the tasks as a one off, he needs to be able to do them safely, repeatedly and within a reasonable time. So needing to pace activity does qualify.

the Pp who said recount his worst days is wrong, the legal test is the majority of days so if something affects him over 50% of the time, spell this out too. There are organisations who can help with the forms and know exactly how to word this.

Well that’s evidence his manager should have done something with the report before now! I still can’t believe they ignored the report for 5 weeks. But I’m pleased your DH has a resolution he’s happy with now.