Too many sick days

[RatiTeen]

I have a team member who takes way too many sick days. Due to which the productivity is low. Her sickness is mainly due to work stress. The workload is not that high but any slight increase in workload stresses her. How to deal with this situation as now that team is expanding, I need her to help out others but she refuses. She is good in the tasks she knows. Any thoughts on how to handle this?

Has she seen occupational health?

Have you sat down and gone through her workload with her? Negotiated what is achievable and timeframes for it to be done?

Why is it you are asking your currently weakest team member to pick up additional tasks?

Can you negotiate with OH around current adjustments - working hours, start times, reduced case load, ring fenced working, set days for her to be left to focus on her caseload and not bothered with additional tasks, booked in work reviews and separate wellbeing meetings....

My boss once told me my workload was no different to anyone else's and I needed to pull my socks up. I was exceptionally depressed and overwhelmed and begging for help. An unsupportive boss in highly pressured work made me much more unwell. He could have helped me in so many ways and didn't even bother his arse to try.

I have asked her to speak with Employees Assistant program team where she can get that support. She doesn't want to go there.

I have sat with her and asked her workload and she doesn't give clear idea on the workload. Couple of times when she gave some workload ideas I assigned that workload to others. This keeps coming back every few weeks. I'm not been assigning more work to hers so that means existing work is causing stress. I have seen some patterns too, like, sick days are many from Jan to June and then Aug-Oct, it then slows down considerably.

I feel the same that she needs to pull-up her socks but I do not want to make the environment unpleasant for anyone as we all spend many hours at work place. I just want to understand till what point this can continue.

Do you have an hr dept? Usually there’s clear steps and a process with informal and formal stages. Refusing EA would be a concern for me as I need to know as a manager how best to support her, especially as the stress is work related.

Whatever I have asked her to work with EA, she has said it's her allergies and migraine and nothing to do with work stress. Other times she has complain that work is giving her stress.

Presumably she self certifies her absences or produces fit notes from her GP. What does she say are the causes of her absence?

Do you have a process in place for managing sickness absence? You need to implement this. Get advice from HR if necessary.

You need to ensure that any concerns about work related stress are considered carefully. Do you have a stress risk assessment process? If it's possible to make reasonable adjustments to reduce any stress, then these should be implemented, but allowing someone not to carry a full workload wouldn't usually be considered reasonable unless there were significant mitigating factors.

Ultimately, you may need to go down the capability/disciplinary route. The main thing to ensure at this stage is a) are your expectations reasonable and are you able to evidence this, and b) to document every interaction with this employee because you might need the evidence later.

You are past the point. From the sounds of it, a long way past it. If everyone else is seeing this (and they are) then you already have an unpleasant work environment, you just have polite employees who don't speak up what they are thinking.

Your workplace must have an absence management policy. Use it. Full stop. That is your job.

I've dealt with something similar (but not work related stress). I work somewhere with a clear 'managing ill health' policy which makes things quite straightforward, but no less difficult.

Occupational Health referrals don't need to be work related - just to see whether things can be put in place in the workplace (at least that was what I've used it for). The steps in the policy need to be taken and documented ('spoke to x on date and recommended they contact EA programme' 'suggested the need for an occupational health review but was refused'). If they refuse offers of help it can count against them if it comes to a disciplinary.