Grievance?

You need to be clear on three things.

The first of those is that your ship has sailed on a grievance- if you believed that there was something wrong in what happened, the time to complain about it was at that time. Even if the manager hadn't now moved on (and there is no evidence that he was managed out), over a year had passed since these events.

Based on your version of events, I struggle to see anything at all wrong in what happened. There were investigations into your conduct, which is a legitimate activity, and which, according to you, rightfully determined that there was insufficient cause to take matters further. So the system worked. And he did not talk about you in front of others - he took you into a private room with other managers and explained the allegations against you. That is nowhere near bullying. A bully doesn't do it in front of three other managers!

The third thing is that it is irrelevant whether you are being arrogant in your claim about your skills or not - you have no right to a promotion, no right to move sideways, and actually especially no right to arrange your own "development opportunities". That last action, in itself, could be easily be the root of the entire problem - depending on what you did, that would very definitely have been designed to get up a managers nose at best, and possibly worse.

You say that you work in the public sector, so I'm going to point out a few further issues. The first of those is that progression in the public sector, as we were only discussing on here yesterday, has been dreadful for several years now. Between the cuts which have reduced staff numbers and increased workloads; and the fact that the public sector now has an imbalance with a rapidly aging workforce due to people not being able to progress or retire, there are simply far fewer jobs to move up to.

Secondly, whether it is a coincidence or not, you have had "almost a year off sick", when it is also almost certain that your paid sick leave is one year. Coincidence that you only went back to work when the sick pay was running out? The employer won't think so! So it won't be written down anywhere quite like I'm going to tell you, but you already have a black mark against your name for that. And they'll be watching you. You have actually, inadvertently perhaps, given additional cause for management concern.

Thirdly, a year off sick, in the best of circumstances, is not anything like a recommendation for promotion. The chances of your being promoted now are slim, until you have proven that you won't be off for months on end again. Again, they won't tell you that....

And lastly, you seem to have a naive view of what managers do. If your are off sick, if you are talking to a manager, then of course they are discussing that with HR! That is their job. He may not have had anything to do with the investigation, but he had a job to do; and given the circumstances part of that job would have been to protect the employers interests with regard to someone off on long term sick leave, and under investigation, where there may be a number of legal issues. That doesn't mean he lied to you at all.

To be honest, I'd have to say that to recover from this position now, you probably have two options. The best one is to find a job with another employer, and get a new slate. If you can't do that, become invisible. No time off sick, no grievances, do your job and do it well. That last part is particularly important. That is the way that you progress - you don't do things that aren't your job, you do things that are your job and convince managers that in doing that you can be trusted and given development opportunities or promotion.

IMO the guy has gone, so get on with it. You was too intimidated to do anything when the moment was there and thats fair enough, many people get intimidated by others. But you can now work in peace.



Setting up your own development opportunities sounds very shady and i bet it !!!!ed a few people off. Use the proper channels.