How much personal information/detail do you have to share with work when struggling

[1woodpecker]

Is it enough to say you’re struggling due to personal reasons, or do you have to detail what these are?

in my case - infertility and loss amongst other personal things. This is impacting my emotional capacity at work, and I’ve left my manager know but not the reason why.

I worry about what their perception is (I guess anyone can just say they’re struggling due to personal reasons?!) - do I accept that I just need to suck it up unless I’m willing to share why?

If I share, can I ask a manager to not share it or does it have to be shared with HR/their managers?

Personally I would share with my manager some detail as just saying “I’m struggling” isn’t helpful as the personal reasons could be anything - and indeed could be misconstrued as trivial. I’ve been a line manager and been told this and it did make trying to support / help tricky. I have also been in the position of being asked to keep the reason confidential which I did and your manager can do and being told did make it easier to manage / be empathetic. It does help massively if you can give a little info i.e. a bereavement / infertility as it helps the manager help you i.e. if you are due to do some training and 3 of the 5 other participants are pregnant / just back from maternity I would try and get you into another session - no drama and no one needs to know anything. At the end of the day it’s your decision but I think you will find your manager more empathetic and helpful if you do share a little information ( doesn’t have to be chapter and verse) .

I would share not least because pregnancy related sick leave does not count towards other sick leave (if your work place has sickness triggers etc for days taken off) and can't be taken into account for disciplinary action etc and should be logged separately.

Ivf on its own doesn't count as pregnancy related but a miscarriage would etc.

Please do check this against your situation.

I would much prefer my team was honest but appreciate some bosses are arseholes!