Capability & Email Access Issues

nightingalesgarden

If your friend doesn't want a work colleague or a union representative another alternative is to go alone and ask for the meeting to be recorded. The final alternative, if she really does not want to attend and/or the organisation does not allow a family member to attend is to request having the meeting by post or phone.

However distressing this situation is to your friend this does just sounds like normal practice, home visits and then once a trigger date has been hit and invitation to a formal meeting. In my experience, though family members are welcome in informal meetings such as home visits it is rare to allow them into formal meetings (someone once asked me if they could bring their priest).

I would caution against refusing to attend the meetings as, once a reasonable period of discussion has taken place, these could take place in her absence or by post (it's a final option for an employer but they will eventually follow this route) - far more difficult for your friend to put her case forward. She is much better attending the meetings, however stressful, to find out how things will work.

On the email question - Usual practice would be to allow the individual into the office to access what they need at a set time or to ask HR to print off and send the emails that they require. But she doesn't need evidence to lodge a grievance. She can just put the broad outline in the complaint, state that the evidence is in emails between x and x date held on the company exchange and that she will need access before being invited to a formal investigation meeting.

CFC

I agree with Nightingale.
Most employers will not allow a family member in a formal meeting.

What outcome to this situation are you hoping for, Terry? If the workplace is a trigger for her issues (assuming that we're not looking at proper bullying etc) would she in fact benefit by having her job held open so she can return to work? How long has she worked there, a company is not going to hold a job open for long for an employee with service under a year, whereas the period of time before capability proceedings commence formally might be extended for someone with greater service?

Is the grievance related to the absence?

I think you must be a quite inexperienced manager, with respect, if you believe it to be very likely that the HR rep would just blithely delete emails that are relevant to a grievance. The fact that the HR rep is pursuing the LTA case equally with the manager means just that - they are both working on the case. HR isn't there to give employees tea and sympathy, they are there to ensure that the law gets followed and to keep the company out of trouble.

Be careful that you don't feed into your friend's feelings of paranoia, which she is likely to start feeling as being absent and being processed down the capability route.

Terrylw1

nightingalesgarden wrote: »

If your friend doesn't want a work colleague or a union representative another alternative is to go alone and ask for the meeting to be recorded. The final alternative, if she really does not want to attend and/or the organisation does not allow a family member to attend is to request having the meeting by post or phone.

However distressing this situation is to your friend this does just sounds like normal practice, home visits and then once a trigger date has been hit and invitation to a formal meeting. In my experience, though family members are welcome in informal meetings such as home visits it is rare to allow them into formal meetings (someone once asked me if they could bring their priest).

I would caution against refusing to attend the meetings as, once a reasonable period of discussion has taken place, these could take place in her absence or by post (it's a final option for an employer but they will eventually follow this route) - far more difficult for your friend to put her case forward. She is much better attending the meetings, however stressful, to find out how things will work.

On the email question - Usual practice would be to allow the individual into the office to access what they need at a set time or to ask HR to print off and send the emails that they require. But she doesn't need evidence to lodge a grievance. She can just put the broad outline in the complaint, state that the evidence is in emails between x and x date held on the company exchange and that she will need access before being invited to a formal investigation meeting.

Thanks for the response, some useful points there.

On the email, its normal practice to do it line managers but it would be appropriate here as its about some of them, so a hr supervised visit seems best as there a lot if different emails over a long period so IT people would retrieve a lot that would still need sifting through.

The process is normal and she is fine with it but there have been parts where I have found the hr rep to have ignored their written procedures such as the companion rule which does clearly state a member of the family is allowed for LTA. I'm sure it will be sorted once its pointed out its just a shame the hr rep is poor.

Terrylw1

CFC wrote: »

I agree with Nightingale.
Most employers will not allow a family member in a formal meeting.

What outcome to this situation are you hoping for, Terry? If the workplace is a trigger for her issues (assuming that we're not looking at proper bullying etc) would she in fact benefit by having her job held open so she can return to work? How long has she worked there, a company is not going to hold a job open for long for an employee with service under a year, whereas the period of time before capability proceedings commence formally might be extended for someone with greater service?

Is the grievance related to the absence?

I think you must be a quite inexperienced manager, with respect, if you believe it to be very likely that the HR rep would just blithely delete emails that are relevant to a grievance. The fact that the HR rep is pursuing the LTA case equally with the manager means just that - they are both working on the case. HR isn't there to give employees tea and sympathy, they are there to ensure that the law gets followed and to keep the company out of trouble.

Be careful that you don't feed into your friend's feelings of paranoia, which she is likely to start feeling as being absent and being processed down the capability route.

Thanks for the response.

She's been there over 10 years, the grievance is related to the absence and she has always stated that she wants to return to work...she doesn't want to be off at all and spent time trying to get help from her employer who just ignored her requests.

There is a lot more in this case but I understand those better, hence i just wanted advice on these 2 issues.

I agree that hr should be acting in the interest of both the employer and the employer, however the hr rep has stated she cannot have a member of her family there but the written company policy she has obtained states the complete opposite. The hr rep has done other things such as try to add additional notes to the written letters following the welfare meetings and when challenged by my friend and her member of the family who was present, the hr rep immediately backed down and changed it. Other issues included their admission that other forms have been falsely populated that would influence the coming grievance and whilst they backed down they still wanted an incorrect document signed rather than issue another one which is a joke.

I'm not inexperienced, but my experience must differ to yours. I agree it would be unlikely for hr to delete emails but I've seen the lengths some managers will go to if it means they get out of a grievance so its best to be cautious when you are not in work and able to get at the proof.

I think my friend, she will be getting support from me, but I wont sit back and watch her get taken for a ride so if i can help her, i will but its always her choice if the experience is too much to justify doing it...but with it all be linked she would be playing into her one managers hands and hr can't help with the work adjustments in her case if she doesn't deal with a fair amount of it. In terms of the capabilit, hopefully pointing out the hr reps mistakes it might make it more bearing and not feed he paranoia that thery are doing something underhand.

Sambucus_Nigra

gocat wrote: »

Why cant you take a member of your family with you.
I have a meeting next week due to absense of 4 months.
Non of my colleages have contacted or visited me in that time so I
Dont want them with me.
Union dont seem to be replying to emails.
Only person I am left with is my hubby who wants to attend with me.

Because that's the law.

If you are in a union then they must respond - you are their customer and that's the reason you have paid into their subs for years.

You would be better off with a new thread to advise you to be honest, as people may not realise this is a new query.