That would be one of the girls I once managed and still follow through social media. She came to my team from one that was run by a type of manager I call tyrant. All his way or the high way and no room whatsoever for the human aspect of employees. During our transfer chat he pretty much told me that this young lady was no good and had signed off sick and I should just drag her into a disciplinary meeting and giver her a warning. I was appalled. Even more so when this young lady came to see me to hand me her doctor’s note and all I could see was a sweet, somewhat shy girl, afraid I was going to give her a hard time. She was sugned iff with depression. We had a bit of a chat and I assured her she should take her time and we would look at how to get her back to work when she was ready.
She came to see me again before her signed off time was up to tell me she was ready to try a few hours to see how thing went. Mind you, this was a call centre job and pretty much the worst job anyone struggling with depression could be in. She asked whether she could do some admin work and I managed to find her some. She did well and took initiative by telling me she was ready to work more hours before I felt I should check with her about that. And then she was ready to try taking calls again, again by her own initiative. Just as long as she didn’t have to do late shift for the time being. Got that approved by higher up. Of course higher up felt like I was treating her with kidgloves, so I explained to them that she was using her own initiative to take on her regular duties again, something no one else I managed had ever done. They cut her some slack for a little while, but then made me have the convo with her about the late shift.
Just like I expected, she immediately went off sick again due to the pressure put on her. Just one week this time as that’s how long it took her to pull herself up by her bootstraps and come back to me and explain that her anxiety was so bad, just thinking about doing late shift, but that she understood she had to try it. So we talked a bit about her anxieties and then I had her scheduled for the late shift. I spoke with the team leads on duty that shift and asked them to keep an eye on her and cut her some slack. Thankfully there were a couple of great team leads on duty. She did well and it truly was a little victory for her.
She slowly increased her hours until she was on normal rotations. She became one of the most loyal members on my team, backing me up against a couple of back stabbed on the team. She was amazing!
She quit sometime after I landed a better gig, worked on her mental and physical health and studied to become an operation assistant (I’m probably bit saying this right) with the NHS. She recently graduated and I am proud of her for what she has achieved! I just hope that the English government will invest in the NHS again so more people can be hired as she told me that the workload and stress are very high.