Distressing response from HR

[Pegs11]

A good friend of mine is really struggling with life at the moment, she’s trying to escape a very abusive marriage and has a heap of other worries (including financial) that mean she is in a very vulnerable emotional state, and her mental health has taken a massive hit. She has been concerned that it might be affecting her job (she’s definitely very stressed at work) so she spoke to her boss and told him what’s been going on, explained her situation, the domestic abuse, the money worries etc, and expressed that she was concerned it might be impacting her capacity at work.

Her boss took that information straight to HR (without asking her if that was ok), and HR have triggered a performance review in two weeks’ time. They’ve said to my friend that they need to check she’s doing the job to a good enough standard and if she’s not, they can’t guarantee she won’t be let go.

My mate is terrified of losing her job, because losing her job will seriously undermine her chances of being able to get out of her unhappy and unsafe life situation. So when HR checked in with her a few days later, she told them everything was fine now and they don’t need to worry. They said “there you go, you just needed a bit of tough love”.

This doesn’t seem like very good behaviour from HR? They’ve offered no support, no reasonable adjustments… they’ve just terrified my friend into silence and now she feels under even more pressure at work than she already did.

What can an employee do in a situation like this?

Yup, this. This manager is a snake, and a bad manager. I feel for your friend. Does her company offer Employee Assistance of some sort?

This seems very likely - i.e. that the manager triggered the review

I have many good supportive colleagues in HR. I agree they end up taking the fall for others, often.

But here it seems to have been HR who told the woman she only needed "tough love". So I'm not impressed by them, whatever the manager's role in all this.

You can’t expect manager not to tell HR, they are there for this reason specifically. But manager should have at least clarified this at point of first discussion.

Agree in most cases HR would not have said any of this (even though they do act with company’s best interests in mind, as well as employee’s, as someone said earlier).

It’s possible that the manager has noticed dip in performance, is now worried they won’t be able to handle the situation given what they now know and complexity. They maybe didn’t actually share with HR the reasons your friend gave for the issues, just that there had been performance issues. HR would then reasonably suggest a performance review, but it would really come from the manager not HR.

Weird if HR did then did say the “tough love” thing and cancel the review. As if my suggestion above was true, they would insist on doing the review anyway (employee can’t talk themselves out of something like that- they have to prove improvement). Makes me think even more that the manager didn’t give the reasons, maybe just said “OP’s friend has some stuff to sort out that’s affecting performance” and when your friend told them they’d sorted it, HR took that as “the warning worked”.

Anyway I’m speculating. The company should be supportive and make reasonable adjustments, point towards resources etc. But will also take in to consideration if your friend is taking all the steps available to her to solve the situation, and how long it’s been going on for with no prior explanation. Even with the best of intentions there is only so long an employer can support underperformance or regular absences if it’s affecting the organisation. So there needs to be a plan in place from both sides.

It all depends on what her boss has said to HR though…

Because for all we know, they might have reported some issues with her work and highlighted that your friend is agreeing as due to home circumstances.

The issue for me is tte fact her boss has not reported any previous issue with performance to her and therefore there has been no possibility for her to improve/modify her behaviour. So how can you have a review for bad performance at work when you’ve never been told about it before? Surely there is an escalation procedure and this is the Last step?

That’s awful!
no a boss is not a counsellor as someone said but there’s a duty of care and and employee telling their boss issues that are affecting them is not crossing a line at all. The boss won’t have all the answer but 1- can signpost them to support and 2- be bloody supportive!
HR do not make the decisions so I wonder what this boss has actually said.
where is the offer of occ health referral to understand how best to support her? Where’s the stress risk assessment? Where’s the compassion??

That’s really grim.

The performance review wasn’t even dressed up to be a supportive or constructive process. It was simply designed as a threat to ‘shut the fuck up and do your work’ evidenced by them then extolling the virtues of tough love when your friend had been scared enough to minimise and backtrack.

If there had been previous concerns raised about genuine performance issues the review would’ve gone ahead.

I want my staff to feel valued, and appreciate it when they choose to share information from their private lives that is affecting them. Because that then allows me to support them in a variety of ways whilst they get through a difficult time. Often what’s better for the individual in these type of cases is ultimately better for the business. And also I’m human being with a basic level of compassion. It’s not hard.

People say this all the time, and as someone who works in HR I’d argue that the best way to protect the company is to make sure they are treating employees fairly. This seems to be exactly the opposite of this, and something I’d advise them strongly against. If she has mentioned that she has mental health issues they should be looking at reasonable adjustments to help before issuing any kind of performance warning.
Hopefully it has just been terribly phrased and they mean that they want to review her performance to see if there are any areas that she needs support with.

This is not always the case. I am an HR leader and for this scenario I would advise the employee to go on immediate sick leave and advise the manager that they needed rlto support her.

Reasonable adjustments apply to disabilities so wouldn't apply here but she would have a certain level of security on sick leave to take some time to sort out challenges in her personal life.

HR do not 'work for the company' in a good and decent company. We advocate for employees on a daily basis, you just don't hear about it as its behind the scenes.

Thanks everyone for your replies. It seems to be quite a divisive issue! Which suggests to me that there is still no accepted industry standard for how employers handle this kind of situation. Which is a shame, and feels outdated to me.

It makes sense that it would probably have been her boss that triggered the review (I’m not sure whether the review is still happening or not) and it may have been her boss who made the “tough love” remark, not HR. I can’t remember.

If my employer had made such a remark to me when I was struggling with mental health issues, it would have sent me over the edge.

I have advised my friend to contact ACAS as it seems that would be the most sensible first step.

The boss would be the one to trigger the performance review, perhaps they were looking for an excuse to do this. I’m not sure divulging all this personal information to her manager was necessarily a good move they are not your “friend” as such

I don’t see why an employee shouldn’t divulge this info to their mgr. it’s clearly affecting them and gives the mgr an understanding of what’s going on. The worst situations I find are when employees don’t engage so how can the mgr support them.
here unfortunately it’s been used against her which I would hope is not the norm!

Whilst saying go off on sick leave seems like the best option for most of us, in this dv situation being in work maybe safer for this person than being at home more and at the mercy of their abuser. Work may be a safer space and an escape from the abuse.

@Whowhatwherewhenwhy1 I think the main problem with going off sick - or indeed, being sacked for incapacity - is that she needs to maintain her current level of income so that she can save money in order to get out of the horrendous domestic situation she’s in. She can’t absorb any reduction in income (most people only get about two weeks’ full pay sick leave) without it setting her back massively in her efforts to leave her husband. I think the stress caused by any dip in income would just make her sicker and make it more difficult for her to return to work.

There must be thousands of people in a similar situation - whereby the more sick you become because of money worries, the less you have the capacity to earn money… which just creates more money worries… which makes you even sicker. It sucks that it’s just the way the world works.

I wonder however if there is any income protection scheme she can sign up for… it would cost a few quid per month but ultimately would mean her salary is safe for a good length of time. (Have I got that right?)

@Whatyoutalkingabouteh Yeah, it feels to me like her employers have only listened to the second part where she said “…this is affecting my work” and not the first part where she said “I’m the victim of domestic abuse and it’s affecting my mental health and…”.

Don’t employers have some duty of care?

Would a note from doctor or an occupational therapist qualify her for reasonable adjustments?

Reasonable adjustments as far as a legal requirement go, are for a disability. However, that is any long term medical condition that lasts more than 12 months and has a substantial impact on her life. So mental health can be covered by this.

There is no legal requirement to make adjustments for short term things, but many employers could/should take the view that it is better to support a good employee when they are going through something difficult to help them remain in work. Rather than have them go completely off sick or lose them entirely and have to recruit and train a replacement.

What an utterly disgusting response.

We have a Domestic Abuse policy at work where we would be supported and protected. Not victimised further.

I'm so sorry for your friend.

Same here, a whole toolkit that makes it easy for managers including suggestions for adjustments they can make to help. It actually suggests adjusting workloads and objectives and allowing them to access support during work hours.
Sounds like both the organisation and the manager here have forgotten all about compassion and morals.

and it may have been her boss who made the “tough love” remark, not HR. I can’t remember.

Then you shouldn't have said in your first post that it was HR - it was barely believable anyway

@CovertImage you’re probably right. It didn’t occur to me that it might actually have been the boss and not HR until someone here said it probably wasn’t HR. I recounted what my friend told me as accurately as possible, but it’s possible I may have misremembered that detail. I apologise if I have caused confusion or indeed offence. At the heart of my clumsily worded initial post I was seeking input on the acceptability of the way my friend has been treated by the company overall in these circumstances, and what can be done in circumstances where a company appears to be mis-using sensitive information shared by an employee, potentially causing harm to that employee’s wellbeing.

Look for another job! Do you really wish to carry on working for that company?

@Pegs11 any updates op ?

I’ve had similar done to me before. I was incredibly ill for months and fainted at work, got sent to hospital and diagnosed with a serious disease that requires lifelong treatment. My performance at work dropped because I was struggling with all of this, and when I explained to my manager what was going on, he took the opportunity to report me to HR. They sprung a meeting on me without prior notice and I had no representative present, and they basically told me I had to pull my socks up or they’d sack me. No support to deal with my medical issues, just threats. So I had to pretend I was feeling better and my health was under control, even though it wasn’t. I struggled on for another two years, desperately trying to hide my illness so I didn’t get sacked. Then I had a full on breakdown.

You need to say what job it is. If its medical for instance and she's dealing with patients/front line care/caseloads. Not that HR have handled it well but if she has a highly pressurised job to do with customer safety that could be a worry. Without knowing what the job is there's not really any context. She did actually say it's affecting her work so perhaps the review will be about possible solutions. Seems weird they'd imply before review that she could lose her job. Is that in writing?

@Mountaineer0009 I’ve not had a chance to catch up with her properly in ages. I don’t know the details as to how things panned out in her job, all I know is that she’s still working there. And she’s still with her husband.

@DeeCeeCherry it’s a regular office job.