managing someone with depression?

[woodenspoon]

Someone in the team at work has said she has depression, following some redundancies earlier this year. There are a couple of areas of her work-related performance where she needs to improve, and these are long standing issues which are being mananged a bit more explicitly than previously. HR is off sick, and I am not getting much advice from them.

Anyone got any tips about how to manage this person? We need to improve performance but do not want to make the depression worse.

Perhaps improving her performance will help with her depression. Perhaps be as strong and movtivational as ever with her whilst supporting her and showing belief in her.

A bit vague I know.

have you asked her how you can best support her?

offering her a bit of sort of flexi time, so she gets her hours in for the week, but when she feels most like doing them...may also take some stress off her and therefore she may be more able to do her job well?

some people need very clear instructions/targets/goals/tasks to be done....maybe if she's like this, you can give her a concise list of things to be done within her working week....

can you give her a kind of safe area...i mean if she needs to talk..maybe she can give you a sort of catchphrase, same if she nmeeds to take off for half an hour....

its very difficult really.... what sort of work is it? retail/office/people etc??

Personally I would keep the two seperate in some aspects. Have you spoken to the MOS about her medical conidtion to see how as the employer you can support her? You need to understand a few things like when was she diagonised? Is she on any meds? What suport is the GP offering? You need to find out if the depression has been trigger by anything specific ie problem at home, work etc. PLus what is she doing to help herself? This should be noted down and can be kept with her sick file. Do you have an occ health suport you can speak to? they will usually be able to give you advice re how to handle. Then you can see what you can do to support eg time for appts she may have. If meds affect her or if not sleeping well you could alter shifts slighty to support ie she could work 10-6 instead of 9-5. Might also be worth taking some numbers for MIND and SANE for eg with you if she is not getting support anywhere else.

As for her performance issues, it is very important that everyhting is followed to the letter and nothing missed, if a review is due it must be done. Any again what is she doing to improve her performace.

hth

You need to find out to what extent if any her depression is affecting her performance. You need to find out what support she feels she needs. You need to find out what other support she is getting from GP, other health professionals and family/friends.

You need to establish whether this depression is work-related. If you have occ health then she needs to see them. I'm assuming it's a small company if HR is off sick (unless there is a whole department off sick simultaneously!), so there is probably not any occ health. In which case it might involve sending her to whatever medical adviser/doctor your organisation uses, or at worst, getting a report from her GP on causes, prognosis if possible, what work she is/is not fit for, and what you should be doing.

You really need answers to all these questions before you wade in with performance management.

Is there no HR support at all at the moment? Getting medical reports and so forth is something you really need help with to make sure you follow correct procedure - contact with GPs/medical advisers would in most places not necessarily be done by the line manager. There may be a standard letter they send and permission needs to be obtained from the individual if it has not been already.

Thanks very much for the comments. I completely take the point about not wading in with performance management, which is really why I started the post.

We are in an office environment and there is no occupational health team here. There is more than one person in HR but they all insist I speak to the person who is off sick. I am continuing to push them for a more acceptable answer.

My advice is to address the situation now whatever action you take. Was in this sit with a person I manage and kept putting off her appraisal as I was aware of her mood and kept waiting for a good time. She's now been off over 6 months with depression and if we dismiss her as we may need to I risk losing an appeal because I was too kind and didn't make it clear enough where improvements were needed. It can be done while being supportive. Tell HR if they don't help you by at least being present at a meeting it could end up blowing up in everyone's face.