Work advice needed

[MrsAnon6]

I’ve been with my current employer for 18 months. It’s been challenging as it’s an area I’ve never worked in before but I really enjoy it and my boss is very happy with my performance.

I’ve unfortunately had multiple episodes of sickness due to having a child in nursery who brings home a lot of germs. My boss understands this and has been very good but our HR dept have a really strict sickness policy and I was issued with a formal warning (valid for 6 months) in October and this is due to expire in 2 weeks.

I wasn’t happy about it but accepted it and just hoped i wouldn’t get sick again for a long time or if i did I’d just do my best to work through it. Unfortunately I had a mental health breakdown in February due to a change in my usual medication and the Dr signed me off for 3 weeks. Since I’ve gone back I’ve continued to perform well and my boss is very happy with me. I had to have a further formal sickness meeting as per the company’s policy which is essentially the last stage. I have researched the equality act and also information on mind.org regarding mental health as a disability and it appears my situation could be considered a disability under the equality act due to it being long term and me needing medication for it to be managed and to function in day to day life and I have an occupational health report which supports this. During my meeting today my boss told me that the outcome of said meeting could be dismissal or a final written warning which is valid for 12 months which I’m gutted about as I thought that my condition being classed as a disability would mean they’d maybe just keep monitoring the situation or something less formal.

I've spoken to ACAS but they can’t comment on whether or not either outcome would be appropriate so I’m seriously worried.

Just wondered if anyone else had any experience of anything similar and could offer any advice. Part of me feels like resigning as I’m so worried I’ll be dismissed and want to at least be able to have a positive reference.

Sorry OP this is my exact experience of work as a disabled person, too. You're supposed to be protected from robotic absence procedures if it's a reasonable adjustment for your disability but in practice they just follow them to the letter and force you out. If they dismiss you and you want it to go to tribunal, you need to start the process to take them to tribunal within the timeframe (I think it's 3 months).

Hi OP, have you had any reasonable adjustments in regards to your mental health? This could be suggested to your employer to support you to stay in work. I was dismissed from work for having too much time off (I was an inpatient in a mental health hospital for 2 months)
I think if you try and work with them to find a resolution hopefully they won’t resort to dismissal

Essentially they can dismiss you depending on the number of sickness days you have had.
you should have had an OH report prior to starting and they would have disclosed any reasonable adjustments that may be required.

However, should there be continued absences, they can dismiss based on ill health capability.

In terms of your illnesses, what reasonable adjustments do you think they need to put in place to support you?

I work in HR so can give you an idea if they are reasonable or not. Regardless though, they need to adhere to the policy for all staff.

As said above, it is possible that some additional allowance may be made if your condition qualfies as a disability, but that is probably the best you are going to get. These policies are blunt instruments, but the law requires employers to demonstrate that they have applied sickness absence procedures fairly for everybody, and that applies equally to people with disabilities. My (very large public sector) employer allows up to five extra days for disabled staff in any year. That is a total of 14 days in any year, or 4 occasions of sickness (other staff have 3 occasions). Employers are not allowed to operate on the basis of knowing that one person is swinging the lead and another one isn't. Hence why these policies exist.