Is Mental Ill-health to Blame for Your Employee’s Poor Performance?

It’s easy to find ourselves preoccupied with personal matters, but while some can get back on track it isn’t always so easy for others. In some instances, poor mental health or illness may be the cause of unproductive employees.

Are you sure disciplinary is the right route to take?

As an employer, at one time or another, you may be faced with a drop in an employee’s performance. This may raise questions like:

• Are they taking a long time to complete their tasks?
• Do they persistently come into work late?
• Does the person appear uninterested in their work or find it hard to concentrate?
• Is their behaviour towards others unacceptable?

If the answer to a number of these is yes you may be tempted to take disciplinary action. But first, it is essential to consider why an employee’s concentration and performance could have dropped.

First, you should make the effort to find out whether this is purely performance-related or if there is an underlying issue connected to the employee’s mental health.

If you rush into disciplinary action or dismiss the person, you may breach the Equality Act 2010 and in turn, find yourself facing a disability discrimination claim.

More importantly, you don’t want to make life difficult for somebody who may need some help over discipline.

How to ensure low-performance is just low-performance

During the pandemic, the numbers of those suffering from depression have doubled in adults in the UK. It’s now more likely than ever that you will be faced with the complex situation of dealing with mental health issues in the workplace.

We’re not saying you should just let everybody off while their performance levels drop below satisfactory levels, you have a business to run! But while you must exercise caution, there is a right way to go about it. You’ll want to ensure no one is disciplined unfairly.

To start with you want to take 3 simple steps:

1. Identify whether your employee has a potential mental health issue
2. Decide whether the problem is down to mental health – or simply poor performance which you need to address through your normal procedure
3. Manage the capability and disciplinary process sensitively, but by the book.

Mental Health Advisor

We have recently discovered Mental Health Advisor, an online resource dedicated to giving you the tools and information to help identify signs of mental ill-health in your organisation.

They are offering a free Mental Health & Disciplinary Toolkit to those who sign up for their free trial. With this, you’ll receive 20 tools to guide you in managing a poorly performing employee who may have a mental health issue. You’ll get:

• Mental Ill Health Warning Signs Checklist
• Mental Health Discussion Openers Checklist
• Capability Procedure
• Performance Improvement Checklist
• Verbal and Written Warning Letters

There are many more tools available to you with your membership, and during the free trial you will even have access to extra support.

Mental Health Adviser Publication

This is a monthly publication that you will receive to help you meet your legal duty of care towards your employee’s mental health and wellbeing.

You will be kept up-to-date with the latest legislation and employment laws alongside advice and tips on how to implement this into your organisation.