Words of Advice for Managers and HR departments.

Managers - If your performance management process feels like punishment and is mostly threats about job security, if the goals aren't behaviour based, are unrealistic and purely numbers based on exceptional lines in the sand that most are failing at, you could cause them all sorts of mental health problems, like, lack of sleep, panic attacks, eating disorders, depression and ultimately absence from work.


HR departments - If your long term sickness process makes colleagues feel like they're being punished for being unwell; you're doing it wrong. They may not actually care about the outcome and just bugger off and you may lose 25 years experience, just like that.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

No more apologies - for Meltdown behaviour.

I am 52 years old and 2 years ago, I was diagnosed Autistic. I've learnt a lot about myself during the past two years and about ASD in general. One thing I have come to recognise is when I am having an Autistic meltdown.  I am currently waiting for a CT scan as, like many other Autistic folk, I suffer with other medical issues. Asthma and Eczema as a child, Urticaria and allergies. The most recent is more serious heart pains though, especially when highly stressed or exercising. Despite this, I am still doing my best to keep a full time job down. An office job with over 45 hours a week and more every third week, when we have to work on Saturday, yes, six day weeks do suck.  For the most part, we cope well with the workload. There are three of us doing pretty much the same job, although we all each specialise in one particular aspect. But generally, the workload is easily manageable as we can share it out. Manageable that is, until one of us is on holiday.  These past 2 we...
Read more

A morning in the life.

I am woken up. Woken by my wonderful wife with a hot cup of tea. 5 minutes pass, I reawaken. Dozy. Is it the anti depressants? Is it the lack of sleep? Is it mental exhaustion? I doze, now 10 minutes. I drag myself up the headboard and I grab my still hot tea. I balance it on my leg and I doze again, feeling the heat on my leg through the duvet and heat of the cup in my hand. I awaken again, this time more awake, I sip at my tea. I grab my warm towel and I head for the shower. Colder than usual, but warm enough to not cause a shock. I drop it down. Do cold showers really work? What I've read makes sense. It starts to feels warm, so I drop it down again. My body reacts to the cold, and slowly acclimatises. So I drop it again; This is surely below 20c? I wash, and I'm used to the cold, so I drop it again, this is now on cold lock and it feels cold. 3 minutes, I need to do 3 minutes. I haven't even noticed the beautiful blue sky. I have no commitments today. I should be happy....
Read more

Welcome to my world.

I have worked hard since before I left school armed with my valuable Geometrical Engineering Drawing A level. I can't tell you how useful that's been, partly because I've never been asked to remember any of it, so I simply don't know. It was never a passion to be honest, even though I enjoyed it and I was good at it, the year below me were doing graphic design, which looked much more interesting. And my best friend back in the school I left was doing computers. But my blighted dark path into the sombre world of retail had already begun. Fast forward 26 years and the retail world has changed. In my first training session as a Manager back in 2000 I met with a lovely Scottish guy who talked us through a way to speed nap, and/or meditate to relieve stress. I kid you not. As a manager of managers, proud of the fact that every meeting our region had was more like a re-union, and running the largest store on our region, with the highest productivity, I made an insane assump...
Read more