BioPsychoSocial back in Disability Benefits Policy - Keep Britain Working Report

[MrMagoo]

When I worked, in an office they wouldn’t let me have a phased return or a work from home day, so I don’t have much confidence in “barriers being removed”.

 

[bobbler]

It forced me to stop work much earlier than I'd otherwise have done. I was doing part time contracts that paid good money, then taking a couple of months off for rest & recovery before I did the next one. I enjoyed the work and the on/off pattern worked really well in managing PEM and preventing crashes, but in between the contracts I needed to claim benefits.

At the full rate, the benefit was enough to keep my bills covered in between fees. But for the first 12 weeks of every claim they only paid a fraction of it, even if you'd qualify for a much higher rate after that. That initial rate was £72 a week, and no one can cover a mortgage and pay monthly professional subscriptions on that. Yet if I gave up work, I'd get the higher rate all the time.

Which of course is what I had to do, because I couldn't manage without taking the breaks. So instead of paying me benefit for four or five months a year and collecting tax off me for the rest, they paid it year-round. It entitled me to other subsidies that cost the taxpayer, which I wouldn't have received if they'd supported me to stay in work. Whole approach was farcical.

That phrase ‘disability isn’t illness’ is ringing in my ears regarding the ideological not hearing this exists even though it sort of exists for everyone in that if they got ill with flu or sickness bug they are the same in that temporary period so it’s hard to believe they don’t relate.

It’s just that fake simplifying pretending you either can or totally can’t EVER under any circumstances. When they know when they had flu for 2weeks they eventually managed to have a point one day where they could finally slurp some soup which hasn’t meant they could have done it at 9am, 2pm,7pm on Tues. And that they didn’t have to go back to sleep or feel sick after. And more relevantly (as people might twist that as ‘but the soup meant you healed better) remember that time they tried to go into work (and just had to then end up wasting a colleagues time dropping you home again) or take the bin out but ended up knocking themselves back for days making themselves much iller.

To be fair I could see myself when I wasn’t this ill wanting to do something like that and working when ill on a project ‘doing the right thing but making myself so ill I have to collapse very ill for months after’ on repeat and it leading to making me iller because it’s just an extension of the doing a job and having to book annual leave to recover only to well enough to turn up still ill and not really ‘recovered’ does that.

But yes if people want to try and offer something at significant sacrifice (which 3months more ill and even less independent is) for some reason people won’t get that.

It could be that for example that is experience or skill that opens the door to something more manageable because you then have a unique combo of knowledge and skills a future something won’t find elsewhere but that could be just advisory or small hours here or there.

I remember one boss (not targeted at me I don’t think) suddenly one day starting using the catch phrase ‘if they are well enough to come in they can be assumed to be well enough to do the job’ which given the job involved long distance travel, lifting heavy things and long presentations is logical nonsense given that was the bit being inferrred as at issue when those bits were ‘the job’ but most of the job was actually normal office based marketing tasks.

So everyone then started parroting that for every task.

The same person also informally said to me (again I think proud and not directed at me) that because they’d managed to scrape in from sick leave for a stomach related thing and do a five minute intro to a presentation ‘that one time they had that’ something along the lines of inferring ‘that’s being tough’. And me thinking anyone can luck out in blagging five minutes within a two weeks (and of course if that time, or for any other time they or anyone else intended to do that but it ended up not coming off then you just forget the story) , you weren’t turning up doing the ‘that on repeat for 10 hours’ - that’s the ‘being tough’ magicking that for every working day of those two weeks, you do realise.

I was also iller than what they’d had (not that they’d realise it as hers was an acute bout of an illness you catch) every day and hadn’t just delivered the 5min intro but had to do the 45min presentation, four times that day, also around being on my feet with other physical duties for that same 10hour day.

It’s hard to describe how much it took to do that with my body screaming and failing and pull it off to just about good enough with sneaky tricks you learn that take it out of you, and the sheer pain and harm I endured afterwards because of it, days unable to feed yourself wash or talk or sleep due to pain and PEM when others had it as days off they could enjoy. I was just worried how many alarms I’d have to set and how I’d wash before and be on time to turn up after the ‘weekend’. At the time and for months as it impacted sleep and symptoms to that extreme level and you have no leeway in the weeks after in turning up to do the job but are impaired and not waking up due to that.

Hence why I think they thought they were ‘comparing notes’ with a kindred spirit (not a dig) but just had no clue that the power differential and misinformation meant what they thought was ‘the same thing’ wasn’t them actually relating to what I was in situations-wise. That they’d not ‘gained the insight’ to the level they thought.

I never knew why they didn’t realise the former was basically then asking someone else to do what they did 2,000 times in a row and not screw up once within that otherwise that one time (which might only have been being late or having to sit etc) would be what was remembered as ‘not as tough as them that one time’ and not the 1999 times. Or not then need a break after those two weeks because you know it took a lot more out of that ill person working out how to pull it off 2,000 in a row over two weeks due to fear of risk their job (not because ‘they could’ because they hurt themselves doing the impossible for them) had more consequences than two weeks off working out how you were going to pull off that five minutes did. And that person had another week in bed after said five minutes.

 

[Kitty]

I don’t have much confidence in “barriers being removed”.

Me neither. I'd have more confidence if it were the HR departments that were being removed, to be replaced with actual managers. Like the olden days.

Managers know the difference between people who want to work at home because they're lead-swingers, and those who want to do it because they perform a whole lot better when they don't lose two thirds of their day's energy to travelling.

HR departments often are the barriers, because they insist on applying the same rules to everyone.

 

[bobbler]

Me neither. I'd have more confidence if it were the HR departments that were being removed, to be replaced with actual managers. Like the olden days.

Managers know the difference between people who want to work at home because they're lead-swingers, and those who want to do it because they perform a whole lot better when they don't lose two thirds of their day's energy to travelling.

HR departments often are the barriers, because they insist on applying the same rules to everyone.

I’d disagree in managers not being an issue but it seems there certainly isn’t a situation where as if it is a manager that is being a problem HR and the protection they offer or how to play the game (rather than just ‘should do’ without any managing out etc) emboldens rather than moderates where managers learn the idea whatever they do they are there to protect them

HR should be better than and not doing the same for all and missing the ‘fair isn’t equal’ fallacy but I’m not surprised just as you can have problems people as managers that those problem types are part of the spectrum of HR too. Which would then mean bad advice and bad policy.

But both are underneath the same bosses too of course. So it can be that something comes from an hr initiative and misleads leaders … or actually that hr are ‘being told’ and it just looks like it is from hr/them.

There is something about the fallacy /myth many seem to believe of ignorance being a valid excuse of ‘pretending they didn’t know or understand’ like the ‘never got the email so how did I know it was going on in my business’ game we’ve seen in recent inquiries.

But just in case hindsight/foreseeability is being played then it is very easily fixed with communications direct to the inbox of any person working in HR making these things crystal clear - if eg the government wanted the issues or ‘misunderstandings’ to stop happening.

It is a different % of people altogether who carry on playing games after they know that they can’t use the excuse ‘they didn’t get the email/were never told’ because someone else has proof they were sent it and told they just read and abide by it.

With the big caveat of IF there are accessible (to those harmed it’s easy to do when you are stressed/bullied/very ill from it) consequences if games are played (everyone can see through the ‘manage them out’ stuff).

If those aren’t made accessible to ill / injured people to be able to complete when harmed but involve hoops you can’t when ill or risks then everyone knows those people aren’t really covered by those rights/there very likely won’t actually be comeback so both those people already ill are vulnerable but also making actively people ill in the process so they can’t access those rights becomes a potential tactic.

And I think that loophole needs to not be pretended it doesn’t exist and accountability for a lot. Someone is only covered by a law or a right or a safeguard if it is ensured they will get caught /something will happen.

 

[MrMagoo]

Me neither. I'd have more confidence if it were the HR departments that were being removed, to be replaced with actual managers. Like the olden days.

Managers know the difference between people who want to work at home because they're lead-swingers, and those who want to do it because they perform a whole lot better when they don't lose two thirds of their day's energy to travelling.

HR departments often are the barriers, because they insist on applying the same rules to everyone.

My experience is opposite. I spent a whole HR career harassing managers to make entirely inconsequential, easy “reasonable adjustments” crossing out grossly offensive comments about staff in OH referrals, letters, emails and explaining that they couldn't fire someone because dialysis is inconvenient.

 

[MrMagoo]

It’s cultural. I’ve been in tribunals where large employers say phased return didn’t suit because we have too much work on, so they had to come to work on their usual pattern. Not for specialist jobs, but for admins etc of whom there were 100s but they can’t spare 1 person doing reduced hours for a few weeks, the company would crumble!

The law on reasonable adjustments isn’t particularly strong and it’s not well enforced. So you didn’t get adjustments. What are you going to do about it? Go and submit evidence to a tribunal? Who may not agree? Or….what? Go off sick and face sick disciplinary? Go to work whilst ill.