Off work due to autistic burnout

HI if you are worried, you can contact Citizens Advice or even better search for any local disability advice centres : usually these will be in your city or nearest city to you. Also, it might be good to have a bit of counselling from a counsellor who has studied autistic in adults. And see your doctor . 

I knew someone who seemed neurotypical burn out at work and she took about 3 months out, her work supported her and were nice. The best thing to do is try to go a bit minimalistic in your life for a while for example on social media, maybe take a break from it etc, so that you have time to rest and relax and have some time for yourself to do things you like or just to even daydream, whatever you like to do. 

see how you can make things easy for you in your home while you are not at work so that when you go back you have less things to do at home for example so you can rest at home. 

It was not nice of your work to not respond to your email. Does your work have a HR team you could contact or a union? that could help you too. 

I hope you feel better soon, try to just take your time off slowly and relax as much as you can

NAS89050 said:

I sent my work amendments to my work place in May and still nothing has been put in place. I was assigned a mentor,

They did assign you a mentor so they have made progress on their side of the deal.

That mentor is not going to give you top priority as they have their own job to worry about but it is better than before  so that is a good thing.

I would join a union and speak to them about what help they can offer in negotiating and chasing the adjustments. This is much more likely to focus management attention than it being just you.

NAS89050 said:

They cannot penalise me for the autistic burnout and time off work can they?

They will be able to treat it like normal sick leave - this will all be defined in your contract. There wil be a number of days on full pay, more on reduced pay and finally the rest on statutory sick pay levels - not much really.

I don't think they can sack you over it unless it drags on for months, but this is another thing to discuss with the union.

NAS89050 said:

I have anxiety, depression, autism, possible ADHD, PTSD and BDD

Looking at it from a management point of view this now makes you a liability to them compared to a neurotypical. I would make sure that you do everything by the book and don't give them any legitimate change to kick you out on a technicality.

As for managing the priorities and workload when you return, this is expected of any employee. You need to work out what needs doing first and how to keep the other tasks informed of the delay while you deal with the top priorities.

Some multi tasking is probably expected but unfortunately having all the issues you have are no excuse (in their eyes) from being able to do what everyone else does.

How have you managed in the past with conflicting priorities and heavy workload? Maybe try the same techniques and see if they still work for you..

from my experience, yes, they can penalise and attack you for anything and everything and ignore any laws protections or guidelines or anything if they have it in for you.

Hello NAS89050,

I'm sorry to hear that you've felt overwhelmed at work. You might like to have a look at our guide ‘Support at work – a guide for autistic people’ which you can find here:  

https://www.autism.org.uk/advice-and-guidance/topics/employment/support-at-work/autistic-adults  

All the best.

ChloeMod

Hi,

No one can give guarantees about what other people think or do, but one thing I tried, which seemed to work, in a similar situation was to set expectations by writing an email to my manager like this:

Hi manager_name,

I’ve just come back from annual leave, and I have six tasks assigned to me ( see below), all with a deadline for today, which is clearly unfeasible. I’ve listed the tasks with the time I think they will take, assuming nothing unexpected crops up, can you let me know the priority for these tasks so I can do the most important ones first

Task 1 - 2 days
Task 2 - 0.5 day
Task 3 - 2 days
Task 4 - 1 day
Task 5 - 1 day
Task 6 - 3 days

I am currently taking the tasks in the above order of priority. Let me know your priorities as soon as possible, so I can work on what is most important to you. If you need any of these tasks assigning to other people, so they can be done more quickly, then please email that person and myself and I will arrange a handover,

Regards,

NAS89050 said:

They cannot penalise me for the autistic burnout and time off work can they?

What employers can or cannot do depends upon your contract and the Terms and Conditions.

So, are you a direct employee or a contractor etc?

Do you have a set amount of paid sick leave?

Do you have anything in your Contract appertaining to how much sick leave you can take before any action can be taken against you etc?

I worked for years as a contractor, so my paid sick leave was around 10 days a year.

However, within the same company, the employees could have months at a time.

Another issue is being signed off by a GP.

I think there's a certain period where you are self-certificated, then your GP would need to write a sick-note, which I assume would be fine?

Also, perhaps it might be useful if you could define 'penalise'.

Unfortunately, even if the rules allow for time off, there can be some penalising after, which I've experienced, which may not be within rules but a part of managers ways of operating.

Again, if you are in a decent company/institution with a good manager, then that shouldn't happen.