Is it ok to take holiday while off work for stress?

[Digga]

Perhaps some people should be sent on an exchange trip to Foxconn to recalibrate their stress compass.

We've had it easy for decades in the West, the party's over, it's time to get real - as someone lese said, the passengers need to GTFO the bus.

Edited by Digga on Wednesday 13th March 11:06

[JuniorD]

I know a chap, a BIB, who was on sick leave following unspecified injuries Following in car accident. During his sick leave he posted some of the fastest times on Strava and I regularly met him at bike races. He was also on YouTube quite a bit doing various silly, energetic dances. Lots of people swing the lead on sick leave.

[Digga]

JuniorD said:

Lots of people swing the lead on sick leave.

Fine, true, but just as 'lots of people' used to drink drive, this sort of thing now has to be seen as the unacceptable, selfish and unsustainable if we're going to get this country out of the mire it's in.

[saaby93]

Oakey said:

This is the charity in question:
http://www.dowlaisenginehouse.co.uk/

number here
http://www.dowlaisenginehouse.co.uk/?opt=viewpage&...

[JuniorD]

Digga said:

JuniorD said:

Lots of people swing the lead on sick leave.

Fine, true, but just as 'lots of people' used to drink drive, this sort of thing now has to be seen as the unacceptable, selfish and unsustainable if we're going to get this country out of the mire it's in.

I agree with you on that.

[hairykrishna]

This might be too simplistic an outlook but I think that if you find your job too stressful you should get a different job. Not get paid not to do it for a while.

[Digga]

hairykrishna said:

This might be too simplistic an outlook but I think that if you find your job too stressful you should get a different job. Not get paid not to do it for a while.

I cannot really fault the logic in that. It'll never catch on (not with the unions anyway).

[Caulkhead]

Chrisgr31 said:

Caulkhead said:

saaby93 said:

Any idea how much you get as trustee of a charity?

Good question! Let's use our favourite fake charity 'Brake' as an example:

They turned over £1,024,396 in 2011 with 21 employees. Wages and salaries amounted to £577,740 for the same period. They have six directors (pretty much all solicitors or barristers) and one trustee. The 'charity' made a pre-tax profit of £109,959 and a post-tax profit of £109,959. . . . . . . .

Draw your own conclusions.

The rules regarding paying trustees are strict and therefore most trustees wont be paid. However staff are....

And Directors. They have six directors and one trustee. . . .

[mph1977]

hairykrishna said:

This might be too simplistic an outlook but I think that if you find your job too stressful you should get a different job. Not get paid not to do it for a while.

hairy what do you do as a job ?

are you fit and well ? can your job be done if you were in plaster ? or couldn;t stay in one position for more than an hour ?

is your workplace fully accessible ?

do you have a good working relationship with your line manager ?

are you in a domestic relationship ?

do you have kids ?

do you work in an industry subject to the whims of party political point scoring and where performance is measured by arbitrary figures pulled out of some politicians stinking rectum for crowd pleasing purposes
?

do you work in an role where it is deemed a failure if you do not 'improve' 'performance' by several % year on year?

are you in a position where you can increase your prices at will and know that it will not damage your business ?

[hairykrishna]

mph1977 said:

hairy what do you do as a job ?

are you fit and well ? can your job be done if you were in plaster ? or couldn;t stay in one position for more than an hour ?

is your workplace fully accessible ?

do you have a good working relationship with your line manager ?

are you in a domestic relationship ?

do you have kids ?

do you work in an industry subject to the whims of party political point scoring and where performance is measured by arbitrary figures pulled out of some politicians stinking rectum for crowd pleasing purposes
?

do you work in an role where it is deemed a failure if you do not 'improve' 'performance' by several % year on year?

are you in a position where you can increase your prices at will and know that it will not damage your business ?

I'm a research scientist. I spend most of my days tinkering with a particle accelerator.

I'm healthy, fit might be stretching it a bit . I could do some of my job if in plaster - the bits where I sit in front of a computer. Not the bits where I'm crawling around in floor spaces fixing high voltage equipment.

I don't have a 'line manager' as such. I have a good relationship with everyone I work with.

I'm in a domestic relationship. No kids.

My 'industry' is totally at the whims of politics. Don't get grants, the project collapses. We have no money for equipment, me being paid is dependent on flogging beam time to external companies on an ad hoc basis.



I think many people would find my job stressful. Me getting paid is not automatic - it's budget dependent. We often have situations where we need to pull 24 hour days fixing critical equipment to avoid losing contracts. It has other benefits. I find it immensely enjoyable. If I didn't, I'd work elsewhere.

[Rude-boy]

mph1977 said:

hairykrishna said:

This might be too simplistic an outlook but I think that if you find your job too stressful you should get a different job. Not get paid not to do it for a while.

hairy what do you do as a job ?

are you fit and well ? can your job be done if you were in plaster ? or couldn;t stay in one position for more than an hour ?

is your workplace fully accessible ?

do you have a good working relationship with your line manager ?

are you in a domestic relationship ?

do you have kids ?

do you work in an industry subject to the whims of party political point scoring and where performance is measured by arbitrary figures pulled out of some politicians stinking rectum for crowd pleasing purposes
?

do you work in an role where it is deemed a failure if you do not 'improve' 'performance' by several % year on year?

are you in a position where you can increase your prices at will and know that it will not damage your business ?

mph I hear what you are saying but there is a line and it is somewhere between where we are at and Hairy's thoughts. I do a job that, whilst I do not see dead bodies or stuff like that every day, is highly stressful and would be a YES to almost all your questions (sub Politicians for Institutional Lenders/Law Society/SRA and no rug rats).

If I started to feel that the stress of my job was getting to me I would take action and if I found that it was all still too much for me I would have to man up and change to a career that I could cope with easily.

If someone needs a few months off (unpaid) after 10 years straight fair enough, but to expect to be paid is where it goes wrong, as do those who find they are stressed a few months after their employment rights have kicked in.

My point I suppose is that you do not go into a career that is well know for breaking people and then complain when you start to suffer from stress. Most of the time that is not the employer’s problem, but the employee’s as they have overreached themselves.

[Engineer1]

Rude-boy said:

My point I suppose is that you do not go into a career that is well know for breaking people and then complain when you start to suffer from stress. Most of the time that is not the employer’s problem, but the employee’s as they have overreached themselves.

I can't argue with that the point is an unstressful job can become stressful if circustances change.

[ShredderXLE]

Then you should leave if you are no longer able to do it - not expect your employer to pay you to be at home when you are physically well enough to be at your place of work.

[hairykrishna]

ShredderXLE said:

Then you should leave if you are no longer able to do it - not expect your employer to pay you to be at home when you are physically well enough to be at your place of work.

It's not just physical well being. I have no problem with someone having time off if they have a mental illness which is making it difficult for them to work even if they are able bodied.

It's just that something just doesn't sit right with me when 'stress' is a reason for not going in. There are many jobs which are stressful - some pay more for that very reason. If you're not a person who can cope with stress, don't do those jobs.

[mph1977]

ShredderXLE said:

Then you should leave if you are no longer able to do it - not expect your employer to pay you to be at home when you are physically well enough to be at your place of work.

Are you stating that ALL mental health conditions are malingering ?

As your stupid brave statement could be read that way,

Alternatively it could be deduced that you do not believe that people with mental health problems and their offspring should not be allowed a job or house and should be being warehoused in pauper lunatic colonies ... as the playthings of J. Savile and/or the nuns and priests of the Catholic church ?

[ShredderXLE]

mph1977 said:

Are you stating that ALL mental health conditions are malingering ?

As your stupid brave statement could be read that way,

Alternatively it could be deduced that you do not believe that people with mental health problems and their offspring should not be allowed a job or house and should be being warehoused in pauper lunatic colonies ... as the playthings of J. Savile and/or the nuns and priests of the Catholic church ?

What on earth are you dribbling on about! This is to do with work related stress - where has the topic been at any point discussing mental illness, care homes and Jimmy Savile?

Its to do with me not believing it is fair for an employer to have to pay a member of staff to sit at home because they find the work they are doing too stressful.

[mph1977]

hairykrishna said:

I'm a research scientist. I spend most of my days tinkering with a particle accelerator.

I'm healthy, fit might be stretching it a bit . I could do some of my job if in plaster - the bits where I sit in front of a computer. Not the bits where I'm crawling around in floor spaces fixing high voltage equipment.

exactly this impacts on the whole 'sick leave' thing - to a point you are lucky that you can do some of your job if you aren't fully fit and able ...

hairykrishna said:

I don't have a 'line manager' as such. I have a good relationship with everyone I work with.

there's someone who oversees you and does your appraisals , directs work though ...

again you are lucky you get on with them now replace that person with a bigot or someone who is just a personality disorder personnifed, someone who goes out of their way to criticise, micromanage and belittle you in the mis held belief it will improve your performance ... happy to work there now ? even though you are still doing the same high quality of work and doing the same 'quantity' of work it;s never enough ... how are you going to feel after a couple of years of that ?

hairykrishna said:

I'm in a domestic relationship. No kids.

my point here was related to stress and the impact of the external on work , imagine for a moment you have got kids and one of them is diagnosed with leukaemia or is knocked off their bicycle and sustains a head or spinal injury meaning they are going to be in hospital for months and require years of rehab ? how is this going to change how you interact with work ? now with your current team and then what aobut if your team were changed for the prats , bigots and bullies discussed above ?

hairykrishna said:

My 'industry' is totally at the whims of politics. Don't get grants, the project collapses. We have no money for equipment, me being paid is dependent on flogging beam time to external companies on an ad hoc basis.

I think many people would find my job stressful. Me getting paid is not automatic - it's budget dependent. We often have situations where we need to pull 24 hour days fixing critical equipment to avoid losing contracts. It has other benefits. I find it immensely enjoyable. If I didn't, I'd work elsewhere.

that said external factors can and will effect your work performance , you are just lucky that they don;t

Edited by mph1977 on Wednesday 13th March 18:21

[IroningMan]

ShredderXLE said:

mph1977 said:

Are you stating that ALL mental health conditions are malingering ?

As your stupid brave statement could be read that way,

Alternatively it could be deduced that you do not believe that people with mental health problems and their offspring should not be allowed a job or house and should be being warehoused in pauper lunatic colonies ... as the playthings of J. Savile and/or the nuns and priests of the Catholic church ?

What on earth are you dribbling on about! This is to do with work related stress - where has the topic been at any point discussing mental illness, care homes and Jimmy Savile?

Its to do with me not believing it is fair for an employer to have to pay a member of staff to sit at home because they find the work they are doing too stressful.

The point is that Stress is a mental illness. The word is devalued in common usage, but the condition is no less serious for it. It's closely related to depression - another devalued term but one that more people recognise.

Much as I dislike swimming against the PH tide, there are an awful lot of 'the answer is MTFU, now what was the question?' posts on this thread. It really shouldn't be necessary to experience mental illness onesself in order to have some empathy with those who do.

[Pesty]

ShredderXLE said:

Engineer1 said:

bks, stress can come from some other incompetent screwing up and dumping work on you or making yoru job harder and more stressful. Or there could be other things going on that mean the normal workplace stresses are becoming too much to bare.

Really? - You honestly believe that "workplace stresses" are a legitimate reason for taking time off sick on full pay. And that the company should continue to pay you a full salary to be at home (for sometimes an indefinite period of time) when you are not actually physically ill or injured to be unable to attend, just finding the work difficult or too stressful? If so you should leave and find another easier / less stressful job. Its not a chance to earn free money for being at home.

"Too much to bare" - jesus christ. Ten to fifteen years ago it was unheard of, now it seems rife.

I belive the stress in this case was caused by his son being a drug addict.

[ShredderXLE]

The bbc report linked by the op claims they were off with "work related" stress.