Help for a friend

spirit

someone I know has been invited for a formal meeting this week. this stems from her telling her boss last week she is pregnant.


so she got a meeting request with her boss last week, who claims she is underperforming. There is evidence to show this is not the case.


My friend has highlighted this to HR and has now been invited to a formal meeting. She has approached a union who say they can't help as she has only just joined.


Does anyone else know who can help please?

gettingtheresometime

Before the meeting I would make sure that I had hard copies of the non underperformance in my possession and off the premises.

sangie595

spirit wrote: »

someone I know has been invited for a formal meeting this week. this stems from her telling her boss last week she is pregnant.


so she got a meeting request with her boss last week, who claims she is underperforming. There is evidence to show this is not the case.


My friend has highlighted this to HR and has now been invited to a formal meeting. She has approached a union who say they can't help as she has only just joined.


Does anyone else know who can help please?

At this stage, nobody really. It's too late to join a union when an issue comes up. That's like insuring your house after a fire!

At this stage it is more than likely that this is a formal meeting to investigate what she had said to HR. You can't just "highlight" things to HR. If they have any sense at all, this is now a formal grievance from her against her manager. I would advise that she tread very, very carefully. Make sure that she had evidence of what she says with regard to everything. Whether she intended to or not, the she had served the employer with notice that they have discriminated against her on the grounds of sex and maternity. That is a big hitting claim that no employer is going to ignore. Or forget. This wouldn't have been the initial way that I would have recommended approaching this, but it is too late now.

Can you please explain the time line better - two things happened last week. Both at the same time? In which order? Did she announce she was pregnant and then the manager said they had performance concerns, or the other way around. The more information you can provide as to exactly what happened, including what the alleged under performance is and what evidence she thinks she has to prove it isn't true, then the better the quality of advice that I and others might be able to give.

If it really is a friend ( it's amazing how many people on here post for friends or hypothetical situations!), then please tell her to be very cautious. Even if she is right and in the right, she just started digging herself a hole. That is why I would have preferred to approach this differently. She could end up with that hole delivering her outcomes that really aren't what she wants. There is now no way of putting the discrimination card back in the pack, and employers seldom take well to such opening gambits. It's wisest to bring out the big guns when you know you are at war, not as soon as the other side look at you.

spirit

hello,


Yes this is not for me I can assure you (I am 59 for one thing)


From what I have seen (she forwarded me the email) the meeting this week is a Perfomance counselling meeting.


The timeline is that she told her boss at the beginning of last week that she was pregnant. she wanted to wait til 12 weeks, til after the scan, but she kept being sick so had to tell them.


The literally the next day, her manager calls her in for a performance review and says she in underperforming.


I don't know that she has accused them of discrimination at this point but will find out later when she is home. I do think she said that her manager might not have followed the correct procedure after having looked at the company handbook.


Her manager claimed that her colleagues don't have a backlog of work and she does. This is partly true, she was on holiday the week before that and on the Friday before that, they put her on a training day knowing they were short staffed.


Now she is back from holiday etc, she has caught up anyway.

sangie595

But, you see, the thing is that she escalated it to HR before there was a reason to, and from what you say it would appear that she had also said she is pregnant.

Put the pregnancy to one side. Forget it for now. The manager invited her, as is their job, to an informal meeting to discuss under performance. Now you are saying that she HAS underperformed! There are mitigating circumstances which she can explain, and now she has caught up. And that was all she needed to do. She has no cause at all to suggest that this evidenced underperformance had anything to do with her saying she is pregnant. I'm sorry, but being objective the manager did nothing wrong.

Instead of going and explaining this to the manager, she's escalated it immediately - and whether she intended to our not, that is a grievance. With anything like this, you never go in with all guns blazing as a first response. Even if, as I suspect is likely, her explanation is totally accepted and the issue goes away, she has probably painted a target on her back. Why would the manager be ok about her running off and reporting him or her, hinting at or stating that is because she is pregnant - and especially since s/he is correct and there is/was a backlog?

What started out as something that was a minor discussion that might have been happily resolved is now a formal recorded meeting involving more people. That never needed to be the case.

We need to know for sure whether she has said or even hinted that the performance matter is connected to her pregnancy. Because I am seeing nothing here that suggests any such link, and if she has, that simply ups the stakes another notch.

And as an aside, that is why being in a union before you get into trouble is a good idea. Despite what many people think of unions, or job isn't to start a war. The first piece of advice would always involve what would be the best way to make this all go away leaving everyone happy. Or at least, equally a little unhappy. You catch more flies with honey...

spirit

Thanks Sangie,


as I say, i'll find out more later.


as for some other comments, from what she has told me, they are not a brilliant company to work for and her performance has never caused any problem at all since she has been there.


Her manager didn't accept her explanation and it go away at all. My friend had to put her comments on the review form after the meeting in which she explained all this, but it wasn't accepted.


All her colleagues have issues with the company/manager and they have a history of a high turnover of staff.


My friend is quiet and stays under the radar, it's only been since last week that she feels picked on.


All she wants to do is stay under the radar until she goes on maternity leave. she really isn't the confrontational type at all, in fact she is rather too passive and less likely to stand up for herself.

sangie595

Oh I didn't ask. How long had she worked there? The high turnover comment made me think of that!

I think you also need to explain to me exactly what had happened here. You originally said that she had a meeting request from the manager - not that the meeting had happened and that the form (what form?) was rejected ( on what basis,?). It seems that the tale is growing like Topsy and I'm not sure I am now following what has happened.

spirit

I'm wary of putting too much info on here as don't want to identify her.


Her manager called her in for a meeting for poor performance in which her manager detailed the points. All of which had mitigating circumstances. My friend had to read and then put her comments on it. These comments were the mitigating reasons and were not accepted.


This performance review was 1 day after she told them she was pg, and there have never been issues before, in fact about 2 months ago, she was asked if she wanted to apply for a team leader role.


She had been there about 16 months I think

Undervalued

spirit wrote: »

I'm wary of putting too much info on here as don't want to identify her.


Her manager called her in for a meeting for poor performance in which her manager detailed the points. All of which had mitigating circumstances. My friend had to read and then put her comments on it. These comments were the mitigating reasons and were not accepted.


This performance review was 1 day after she told them she was pg, and there have never been issues before, in fact about 2 months ago, she was asked if she wanted to apply for a team leader role.


She had been there about 16 months I think

In which case they could have dismissed her for any non-discriminatory reason or no reason at all.

It would be unlawful for them to dismiss her because she is pregnant but that doesn't mean she cannot be dismissed.

Unless they knew she was pregnant (or should reasonably have known) the mitigating circumstances are irrelevant unless the the employer chooses to consider them.

spirit

Undervalued wrote: »

In which case they could have dismissed her for any non-discriminatory reason or no reason at all.

It would be unlawful for them to dismiss her because she is pregnant but that doesn't mean she cannot be dismissed.

Unless they knew she was pregnant (or should reasonably have known) the mitigating circumstances are irrelevant unless the the employer chooses to consider them.

thank you, and this I think is the crux of it. This lot of shysters she works for know exactly what they are doing and is our belief (me, her, her colleagues and her husband for starters) think that they will get rid of her before they have to pay Mat pay or hire a temp for the time she is away.

Undervalued

spirit wrote: »

thank you, and this I think is the crux of it. This lot of shysters she works for know exactly what they are doing and is our belief (me, her, her colleagues and her husband for starters) think that they will get rid of her before they have to pay Mat pay or hire a temp for the time she is away.

Potentially they are taking quite a risk if they go down that route but they may well try.

All she can do is document everything she can and see what happens. If they dismiss her (and they may well not) then it would certainly be worth taking legal advice.