Occupational Health Assessments - advice wanted

[8ball]

Asking for a bit of advice here - my work are asking for my consent to refer them to their Occupation Health providers.

Basically, my job is a consultancy role with some additional training responsibilities, so talking is fairly important.

Also, I pretty much lost my voice a bit over a year ago. After lots of NHS arsing about they have decided to operate on my voice (officially got onto waiting list a couple of weeks ago), but work have been getting increasingly generally arsey about my not being able to fulfil the training aspects of my role, and are now talking about this referral.

I'm not too sure what the agenda is, but I suspect they might be looking for the legally smoothest way to elbow me out of my role without paying the redundancy that would be due owing to my tenure at the company.
I've already told them that they could speed up the operation by paying for it. The end result of the operation is uncertain in any case (involves sticking a kind of shim in my throat to shove a paralysed vocal cord into a more workable position).

Just wondering if anyone had any similar or relevant experience in this direction / thoughts etc.

 

[Edie]

I work in the NHS and have found OH to be supportive when I had to take time off for surgery or for appointments for RA. I haven’t had a situation where I’ve been unable to do part of my job due to an illness tho.

I’d approach it with an open mind and straightforwardly if I were you. Better to have your current disability properly documented and have support to request reasonable adjustments. Can only bolster your employment position.

Hope your op goes well xx

 

[8ball]

I work in the NHS and have found OH to be supportive when I had to take time off for surgery or for appointments for RA. I haven’t had a situation where I’ve been unable to do part of my job due to an illness tho.

I’d approach it with an open mind and straightforwardly if I were you. Better to have your current disability properly documented and have support to request reasonable adjustments. Can only bolster your employment position.

Hope your op goes well xx

Thanks. I found OH fine when I had major heart surgery in 2008, and work seemed fine with my more minor surgeries since.

This seems to have a different edge to it though, and I can tell my boss has picked up on it too.

It seems like they are wanting to dot some I’s and cross some t’s on the legal front before doing something cunty, or at least working out what they can get away with.
In one meeting the word “dismissal” was mooted, like they wanted it on record that the word had been said.

I have no problem with properly documenting, though, and have always been upfront about everything medical.

 

[Edie]

Thanks. I found OH fine when I had major heart surgery in 2008, and work seemed fine with my more minor surgeries since.

This seems to have a different edge to it though, and I can tell my boss has picked up on it too.

It seems like they are wanting to dot some I’s and cross some t’s on the legal front before doing something cunty, or at least working out what they can get away with.
In one meeting the word “dismissal” was mooted, like they wanted it on record that the word had been said.

I have no problem with properly documenting, though, and have always been upfront about everything medical.

Your intuition will be right. But still feel like OH and documentation will be in your favour. They have to show they’ve used ‘proper channels’, you use those channels to build your defence.

Good luck.

 

[Puddy_Tat]

hmm

company doctor or occupational health or whatever is largely there to look after the employer's interests first. if that happens to mean that looking after you is in employer's interests, that's a coincidence rather than the main aim.

so i would handle it with caution, but on the other hand, what are they going to do if you say 'no'? are they just going to move to the stage of trying to turf you out and say 'we tried to help but you refused'?

has employer got a 'capability' policy / process on paper? that can be a way of turfing people out because they are (allegedly) no longer medically fit / capable of doing their job - not to be confused with disciplinary, which is turfing people out because they have (allegedly) done something wrong.

or do they have a policy on re-deployment / alternative employment if someone becomes unable to do the job they are in?

on the other hand, if it's been more than a year, i am fairly sure it counts as a 'long term health condition' under the disability bits of equalities law.

but that requires 'reasonable adjustment' and the difficulty can be deciding what is 'reasonable' as this will depend on the individual circumstances.

for example, if a bus driver can no longer pass the medical that comes with renewing their bus / coach driving licence, then there's no reasonable adjustment that employer can make if they can no longer legally drive buses. although employer might have a policy of trying to provide some sort of alternative employment that doesn't involve driving.

at one point in time, when pension funds were quite healthy, some employers were fairly blase about early / ill health retirement, but that's a lot less likely now, and tends only to be open for very serious / terminal illness.

have you got union representation? if not, a peruse of ACAS website might be worthwhile.

 

[8ball]

Thanks - I’m not a member of a union.
Will check out the link.

I type pretty fast and have asked about Typetalk style applications but nothing was forthcoming.

 

[moonsi til]

Sorry to hear about your voice /health concerns & hope there is a resolution.

In respect to occupational health referral my view is they have to do this so yes it’ dotting the Is. I too work in the NHS & if we had an employee who had a health condition that had treatment planned OH would be saying stay as is until the outcome is known.

I have a colleague whom had a long period off sick & then on return has not performed full role since January 2021 (they do plenty just not all of the role) who I believe is in a stronger position due to their occupational health report which talks about recovery times.

 

[Aladdin]

Personal experience..OH were very helpful to me over the years.

I just wonder is your employer a bit concerned that your work might have caused you an injury to your vocal chords or whatever is prevemting you from speaking?

They might be referring you to Occ H to make sure your workplace is safe for you and to cross their tees and dot the iiiiis.s....but go with your gut on it. You know them best.

 

[8ball]

Personal experience..OH were very helpful to me over the years.

I just wonder is your employer a bit concerned that your work might have caused you an injury to your vocal chords or whatever is prevemting you from speaking?

They might be referring you to Occ H to make sure your workplace is safe for you and to cross their tees and dot the iiiiis.s....but go with your gut on it. You know them best.

Not in this case, but get what you mean.
I have an aortic aneurysm which has impinged on the left laryngeal nerve, causing paralysis.

 

[Edie]

Not in this case, but get what you mean.
I have an aortic aneurysm which has impinged on the left laryngeal nerve, causing paralysis.

Fuck dude

 

[8ball]

Fuck dude

Yeah, it's been an ongoing pile of shit since close to beginning of lockdown.
Fortunately heart rhythm is stable at the moment so I can work on shifting some pounds and getting blood pressure down, which should help keep the aneurysm stable.

Then it's fixing the voice <hopefully before Christmas>, then putting in a new pacemaker fairly soon and maybe removing an old LINQ recorder before the battery starts leaking <they say it can be left in indefinitely but I'm sceptical>. Then, fingers crossed, some fairly normal non-health related shit for a bit.

Hope things are good with you.

 

[cesare]

Perhaps they could buy you an artificial voice generator as a reasonable adjustment?

 

[8ball]

Perhaps they could buy you an artificial voice generator as a reasonable adjustment?

I’ve already made suggestions along these lines. Don’t suppose you know of any particular systems?

 

[cesare]

I’ve already made suggestions along these lines. Don’t suppose you know of any particular systems?

Unfortunately not. People I know tend to use speech to text, more like dictation which is the opposite of what you need. But I don't know if those types of systems eg Dragon, can do text to speech as well.

It might be worth researching the systems that YouTubers etc use (you may have already done this of course). Some of the voiceovers are pretty good.

Here's an example: