At the best of times, managing an underperforming employee requires a balance of empathy, fairness and risk awareness. This is amplified where an employee discloses that they are impacted by a mental health condition during the process.
Australian Industry Group’s Workplace Advice Line often receives calls from HR professionals and managers who are uncertain about how to proceed when a mental health condition is raised unexpectedly. Common questions include:
An important thing to keep in mind is there is no one-size-fits-all approach to dealing with any medical condition. Mental health covers a wide range of conditions which will have different severity and impacts on an employee and their ability to perform their role.
Here are some tips for managers to consider when a mental health concern is suddenly raised.
When a manager is not confident with dealing with a sensitive topic like mental health, their immediate reaction might be to overcompensate (for example by dropping the performance management immediately for fear of risk), or undercompensate (for example by ignoring what was said and pushing onwards).
A better option is to pause to allow the employee the opportunity to talk about their circumstances.
The fact that an employee has a mental health condition will not always be relevant to an employer. What is important is how the mental health condition affects the employee’s ability to perform their role.
It will often be helpful to ask open-ended questions that focus the conversation on how the employee perceives their condition is affecting their work performance.
The timing of the disclosure might make it tempting to assume that the employee is just making an excuse to avoid potential disciplinary action. But unless proven otherwise, it is better to treat any health disclosure as a genuine disclosure about a sensitive topic.
It is also not appropriate for an employer to diagnose an employee or assess the seriousness of an employee’s medical condition. That is a job best left to a medical practitioner.
Once an employee has disclosed a mental health condition, it will usually be beneficial to seek more information from the employee’s treating health practitioner. This does not mean jumping to the conclusion that the employee is unfit for work. A mental health condition might be significant enough to make someone unfit for work, or it might not.
The goal is to get a medical opinion on the employee’s condition and how it affects their performance.
How to approach this will depend on what the employee has already disclosed and the seriousness of their condition. In some cases, it will appropriate to ask for more information about the employee’s fitness for work based on their job description and then give the employee a reasonable period of time to seek information from a health professional.
A mental health condition does not exempt an employee from performance management, but it may provide an explanation for why the employee is finding it difficult to meet the expectations of their role.
It will generally be appropriate to continue the performance management process after taking the opportunity to consider whether additional adjustments and supports can be made to the role to support the employee.
Reasonable adjustments could take many forms, such as extending the time to meet performance goals, temporarily reducing the employee’s hours (by agreement), granting a period of leave, or modifying work processes.
A more serious concern arises if the employee raises thoughts of suicide or self-harm. In these circumstances, some immediate steps are to:
Employers are also required to manage psychosocial hazards in the workplace. This can have intersection with mental health and performance management, for example in situations where an employee raises concerns a concern that unreasonable job demands or inadequate support from management or colleagues are contributing to poor performance.
Employers are recommended to apply a trauma-informed approach to mental health in the workplace to reduce risks to psychological safety.
For assistance with your workplace matters, members of Australian Industry Group can contact us or call our Workplace Advice Line on 1300 55 66 77.
Australian Industry Group’s workplace health and safety consulting service can provide expert advice on managing risks relating to psychosocial health.
