TALKING TO YOUR MANAGER

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Having an honest conversation with your line manager about your health condition is positive, or should be,for all concerned. It will help your line manager to understand your preferred way of working at this point in your illness and understand the tools/support that you need, as early as possible.

You can consider if you would like someone to be with you as a part of the conversation, this could be a friend, a mentor a coach, union rep or someone with the HR and wellbeing team.

How to prepare for the conversation

Due to the complex and hidden fluctuating nature of these health conditions, a useful preparation is to download and draft a Disability Passport, fill it in and possibly send it to your line manager in advance of your meeting. This is also less fatiguing than verbally explaining all your symptoms in a meeting.   You can also fill in a symptom chart e.g. on an Excel spreadheet.

Your manager may require that an assessment is carried out before reasonable adjustments are allocated and require you to work from home (or not to work) until they are in place. (There are potential legal liabilities for employers in not providing for those with long term health conditions). Your employers health and safety team will provide the assessments needed and support you through the processes.  You should not be alarmed at a workplace assessment being carried out, because the purpose is to support you at work.

Other preparations you can make

• Think about what workplace adjustment will help you now and in the long term.  (See Annex C for a proforma for your symptoms)

• Confidentiality: decide how much information you would like to share with your line manager and more widely. You can also ask your line manager not to disclose the information any further.

• Use this guidance above to help you to consider what support you may need and to how to explain your health condition to your manager.

• Work up a list of your symptoms and possible adjustments (read the lists of possible adjustments on another page).

• You can print off factsheets for your manager about your conditions e.g. from the ME Association or ME Action.  There are some NHS slides by a doctor about Long Covid on another webpage.

• Think about ‘soft adjustments’ that you may benefit from. An example is asking your manager to secure you some concessions on ‘information processing’ (which tires the brain in these conditions), possibly allotting you tasks which do not major on processing too much information. ‘Soft adjustments’ can be immediate actions which can be implemented now while you wait on some equipment being delivered. Write this all down before the meeting as this will provide you with a few ‘prompts’. 

• give your manager a link to this toolkit, if they have not seen it.

Think in advance about how to explain and describe your health condition, how your health condition affects your brain and body at work, what your concerns are and where you need support.  Type this all down before the meeting because memory is affected in these conditions and the brain and speech can tire. Discuss how you can manage special/medical appointment leave and sick days.

After your conversation with line manager

Send an email to your line manager to summarise what was agreed and what the next steps are.

• • Start to fill out a workplace adjustments passport if your employer has one.

Get in touch with your employer’s health and safety or disability team for a workplace assessment and advice on appropriate adjustments if needed.