Hello all. I will preface this by saying I am seeking guidance from our HR provider on this, but some "real life" insight would be useful too. This is long, so I apologise in advance!
I have an employee, who I am becoming increasingly concerned about and worry that there is something going on in her home life. She is very secretive about her home life and as far as we have been led to believe, she lives with her partner and mother (she's in her mid 20's, if it's of any relevance).
We operate a hybrid working policy where everyone is expected to be in the office 2-3 days per week/5 times in a fortnight.
She has had more "accidents" in the last few years that have left her injured and unable to come to the office, so has asked to work from home more.
The latest incident was last week where she was apparently hospitalised with severe back pain/sciatica, brought on by one of the earlier injuries that she didn't seek physiotherapy for, although was apparently advised to.
She has since said that she was aiming to come into the office but each day since she has been unable to.
She has worked from home (and from the hospital) over the last couple of weeks, but I am becoming increasingly concerned that there may be something going on at home.
She is never off sick long enough for us to be able to request, under our policies, documentary evidence, though this is a point I'm taking advice on from HR, as it is impacting her ability to meet the hybrid working expectations of coming in.
In summary, the reasons I have a growing concerns:
- In the last three years she has twice been "knocked over" by a car or van (so had to WFH while recovering). All the "injuries" she's had could also be explained by DV.
- Recent incident of being hospitalised by apparent back pain (again, could potentially be a DV incident)
- Used to live quite locally, but moved away for reasons that are different depending on who you talk to. Now lives far enough away that it takes her around 90 mins to get to work on public transport (and asked for her work day to be rearranged so she can leave work early to be home by a specified time). If it's of any relativity to the story, where she used to live, in the pandemic, we used to be able to drop work to her, so we saw her even if she was WFH - now we can't.
- Seems to have been dissuaded from learning to drive, even though she could afford to and would make her working life easier.
Ultimately I'm concerned that there may be some DV going on at home and/or a controlling relationship as it could be interpreted that she has been removed from a close location to work, to make it difficult for her to get her, and therefore kept in the home and isolated. The "accidents" she has have left her injured and unable to travel, or are there injuries also that she needs to cover up for other DV signs?
It may be that I've spent too much time on the MN boards and that she genuinely is just very accident prone, but I couldn't bear to think that something might be going on behind closed doors and I didn't do anything.
So, wise MNers, what would you do?
Should I have a conversation with her along the lines of "Is everything OK at home?"
If you're an employer/manager/team leader, how would you approach it?
If you've been unfortunate enough to have been on the other side, would you have wanted your boss to say something, or did they?
Thanks in advance for your wisdom...