Employees who have \u201cI hate my boss syndrome\u201d should not be signed off sick with a mental health condition, according to the head of a government workplace review.<\/p>\n
Sir Charlie Mayfield said he was concerned some problems are being \u201cover-medicalised\u201d when they could be solved in the office.<\/p>\n
The former John Lewis chairman has been appointed by Liz Kendall, the work and pensions secretary, to come up with plans to stop workers leaving their jobs because of poor health. His report is due this autumn. <\/p>\n
One in five people of working age have a health condition that affects their job and there are 2.8 million people inactive due to ill health<\/a> \u2014 up from 2.1 million since before the Covid pandemic although the numbers had been rising for several years.<\/p>\n Mayfield said: \u201cThe last thing I wish to do is trivialise [mental health conditions] but I agree that things do get over-medicalised. <\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s not to say there aren\u2019t medical issues that need to be dealt with through proper clinical medical interventions, but there\u2019s a lot more that can be done through the workplace and through encouraging discussion and relationships and processes that encourage that.<\/p>\n \u201cIt might be better to say: \u2018What\u2019s making you anxious?\u2019 Because then we can do something about that. And how do you deal with it if you\u2019ve got [an employee with a] \u2018I hate my boss syndrome\u2019? We can say \u2018Is it the case that your boss is hateful\u2019, in which case, that\u2019s probably an issue that we should figure out how we deal with. <\/p>\n \u201cOr is it that your boss is quite legitimately doing what they should be doing, which is challenging you and raising issues of poor performance and so this is a question about helping you to realise that it\u2019s not hateful behaviour, that\u2019s what bosses are meant to do.\u201d <\/p>\n He said when employees are signed off, bosses should routinely contact them to help support their return to work.<\/p>\n He said sick notes create an \u201cimpregnable barrier\u201d between employer and employee, with bosses often too scared of contacting staff for fear of \u201ccausing offence\u201d. He claims this makes it harder for people to return to work after a sickness absence.<\/p>\n Mayfield, 58, said lessons could be learned from the Netherlands, where there is a mandatory six-week intervention meeting requiring employee, employer and occupational health to agree a return-to-work plan with two-week monitoring cycles. <\/p>\n \u201cYou quite often will have a situation where someone gets a fit note and they\u2019re signed off work for a month and then they get an extension and another extension and they\u2019re taken further and further away [from the workplace],\u201d he said. \u201cWhat we know statistically is the longer you\u2019re away from work, the harder it is to get back and the less likely you are to do so. There are some fairly simple things that you could do. You could say, \u2018It\u2019s not OK to be out of touch.\u2019 It should become normal that people are contacted when they\u2019re off sick.\u201d<\/p>\n Mayfield said some organisations already do this but most do not. \u201cThere is a fear amongst individuals who\u2019ve got health conditions to disclose those things because they worry about discrimination \u2026 But there\u2019s also a tremendous amount of fear amongst employers<\/a> who are fearful at one level of causing offence,\u201d he said. \u201cA line manager doesn\u2019t want to offend somebody about something which is personal to them by saying the wrong thing.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve met so many people who have said they were off work for three months and didn\u2019t have a single call.\u201d <\/p>\n He said \u201ckeeping in touch days\u201d like those used by women on maternity leave, could help solve the disconnection between employer and employee and help improve return-to-work outcomes.<\/p>\n