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My Occ Health Referral

JB33

Brief background

I work full time (and have done since I was 18 years old). I work in IT as a software engineering manager and as such, interact with people, fragment my effort across multiple teams and act as a buffer/interface between engineers and stakeholders .. it's all consuming, but I do enjoy lots of parts of my job. 

I have repeat burnout cycles, usually once every 6 months or so, the causes can be commuting, busy offices, lots of expectations, difficult people, <insert external life events> or a combination of all. When I feel burnout signals coming in early, in the morning normally push through or think that more work will solve it (it doesn't). I then go off sick as pretending I am fine is difficult, I normally say it's a viral thing, but the reality is that I need to mentally recover, but feared judgement. 

Occ Health Referral

I had to chase for 4 months for my line manager to finally raise this for me (she kept forgetting .....). I finally had a burnout episode infant of her one day and said this is urgent and I'd like some support. she didnt know what to do or how to help (despite me detailing specific things for her that I think would help). Just had my call there, said that long office commutes, busy offices and noisy environments while in there are contributing to my burnout cycles. During office days, I can't exercise as I have to leave so early to do my 1.5 hour commute stuck in a busy train to then end up in a noisy office. I then get back very late and then can't do my wind down routine. It sounded like excuses when I told my manager about this but occasionally health taken them seriously. The report was strong and factual and they quoted the legal obligation employers have under the Equalities Act to follow through on their recommendations proving they're 'reasonable'. The Occ Health person said that an employer will be silly to ignore the recommendations given the protected status of my conditions (which was to offer flexibility with in office days). I dont want it to drag out and hate conflict, but I am at the point of now standing up for myself more. 

I will post a reply once my employers respond as heart some horror stories on here about workplace adjustments - at least in my case, it felt like my employer has to seriously consider these. 

Parents

  • Not understanding what causes burnout before diagnosis can be hard. It can feel like you are working 4x harder than everyone else just to keep up. I tend to give myself more time but you can only give your self so much more time and space to complete things, other people will just move on or think youre not living in the real world.  This is the crux of the problem I found when working with teams in offices is that there is no real accomodation, no matter how well you do something. Its hard to get promoted if your ways are viewed as unorthodox, or people deliberately don't gel. At least with the understanding of your condition you can offer yourself more compassion rather than simply going harder against the grain to please others. 

    I am struggling with finding work, I think disclosing ASD would make it even harder to find work. Its hard to prove discrimination because it is so embedded in how the 'team' operate. What you notice is the metrics used to measure performance are biased towards a limited range which favor nt operatives. So its win win for the team, everyone who is different to this gets excluded.  The idea of asking for help because I was struggling never occurred to me because I did not have a diagnosis at that time. 

    You should give them some time to consider it and be gracious, reasonable may be a relative term which they take time to understand. Don't think that there decisions are in any way based on you personally as there may be other reasons.

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  • Not understanding what causes burnout before diagnosis can be hard. It can feel like you are working 4x harder than everyone else just to keep up. I tend to give myself more time but you can only give your self so much more time and space to complete things, other people will just move on or think youre not living in the real world.  This is the crux of the problem I found when working with teams in offices is that there is no real accomodation, no matter how well you do something. Its hard to get promoted if your ways are viewed as unorthodox, or people deliberately don't gel. At least with the understanding of your condition you can offer yourself more compassion rather than simply going harder against the grain to please others. 

    I am struggling with finding work, I think disclosing ASD would make it even harder to find work. Its hard to prove discrimination because it is so embedded in how the 'team' operate. What you notice is the metrics used to measure performance are biased towards a limited range which favor nt operatives. So its win win for the team, everyone who is different to this gets excluded.  The idea of asking for help because I was struggling never occurred to me because I did not have a diagnosis at that time. 

    You should give them some time to consider it and be gracious, reasonable may be a relative term which they take time to understand. Don't think that there decisions are in any way based on you personally as there may be other reasons.

Children
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