Stress at Work

This is a preliminary advice not and is not a substitute for taking detailed legal advice in relation to your situation, which may be legally complicated.

Work related stress is unfortunately very common.

This normally starts by a new line manager being appointed, who takes a dislike to a member of staff (“the employee”).

The line manager commences a campaign to attempt to make the employee leave the company.

Work is typically micro-managed. The employee is ignored, including in particular during meetings with other members of staff, and is also typically embarrassed in front of his/her peers.

After a while, stress symptoms begin to appear, including headaches, nausea, loss of appetite, sleepless nights, hearing and feeling of heartbeat, panic attacks and reluctance to go outside of the house. These are all typical symptoms.

The employee typically soldiers on without taking legal advice.

The stress condition always gets worse and eventually the employee is signed off as unable to work by their GP, and is often away on long term sickness absence.

This is normally when we are first contacted by the employee.

The situation can be much better managed if as soon as the campaign by the line manager commences, legal advice is taken, and grievances raised etc.

It may be possible for the employee to be moved to a different department or to report to a different line manager. It is not uncommon for the employee to leave on the basis of a compromise agreement, as they cannot face working any further for the company. This is wholly understandable.

We have a wealth of experience in dealing with situations like this. We are able to provide proactive advice as to what the employee should do to protect their position and if possible to save their job.

We are able to offer an initial fixed fee meeting for £75 plus VAT, and indeed would welcome such meeting to take place by telephone if more convenient.

We would strongly recommend to any employees who are subject to such situations not to soldier on, but to raise grievances with human resources manager in trying to resolve their situation with our help before things develop to the next levels, which they invariably do.

We have a team of lawyers who are able to assist, and in the first instance, please contact Lawrence Rodkin, partner of this firm.

Reading this article is no substitute for taking legal advice in relation to your own position as each case has different underlying facts.