'It wasn't sustainable to continue'

An EEA member shares her story in a blog for employers who’ve had/has an employee who’s struggling/struggled with poor mental health and well-being.

"I have recently had to terminate the employment of someone who has been off long term with mental health problems. She had worked with us for about 11 months.

Quite early on it became apparent that her mental health was not great. Her responses to situations or occurrences that were fairly innocuous to everyone else were way more exaggerated for her. Reactions ranged from being upset and crying through to panic attacks.  

Her development on the job was limited. She had difficulty accepting any form of critique, however constructively given. Her response was that everyone was bullying her.

That in turn made staff very wary about working with her and it meant that she could not be trained in tasks that she would have been well capable of performing. She struggled with any form of responsibility. I chose to accept this and took significant steps to ensure she was not asked to do more than she could cope with and I worked with others in the team to help them work with her. 

During that time I have been nervous about contacting her in case it’s taken as harassing her and I wanted to give her space to receive treatment. 

I was nervous I wasn’t contacting her enough and was particularly worried that I wasn’t clear enough in what information I needed from her even though it was clear in her staff handbook and contract.

I was worried that I wasn’t doing enough to help her return to work but was worried that if I tried to do more she would take this as me hassling her to return before she was ready. Her medical certificates weren’t forthcoming and I did get in touch with her to ask for these. 

Throughout her absence I had been concerned for her well being but I also had to consider myself and the rest of the team. I didn’t want them knackered from having to cover her share of the work but that simply meant that I picked up her work and had the extra work of trying to find cover for her longer term without having any idea from her if/when she might return. 

Thankfully having a contract (created using the Contract Creator) and Staff Handbook in place meant that I could use the information in those to terminate her contract. 

Doing that felt slightly like kicking someone when they’re down but I had to think of the others in the team and the business overall. Now that is done I still have the slight concern that she will attempt to claim unfair dismissal and my stress, worry and anxiety about her will continue!

At the same time I am all for treating mental and physical health problems equally and that may mean that we don’t tiptoe around the issues.

There is a push for greater mental health awareness and I think it is important that we all understand that someone with mental health problems is not ‘making it up’ etc.

I feel qualified to say that having suffered poor mental health myself, I would not want nor expect to be treated any differently to someone who had a physical health problem."

If you need help or support on what you can do to help an employee, or need support yourself go to Employers Minds, which has a section dedicated to helping you to help your employees.

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