Stress Testing …
Hard to believe that a firm like PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) could find itself in this situation …
One of PWC’s partners had been on sick leave since September 2007 suffering from a number of stress-related conditions. In February last year the partner was served 12 months’ notice of redundancy … and he has now taken PwC to court on the basis of disability discrimination. The partner is alleging that PwC failed to make reasonable adjustments to enable him to continue working whilst sick and also, and rather curiously, he says that an offer of alternative employment in a different city was not suitable because it would conflict with his role as carer for his elderly mother.
We don’t know the full background to this story and like any other it will have two sides. But on the surface it really looks as though PwC have made a big mistake in forcing a redundancy where a capability dismissal would have made more sense. Whether or not the partner is genuinely disabled is another point of contention – this is one of those murky grey areas in employment law – and the case might largely rest upon determining this as fact.
Employers shouldn’t believe there’s no solution to the issue of long-term sick leave. There are a number of preventative strategies that you can consider – including robust insurance policies – and if you’re too late for prevention then whatever you do be sure that redundancies are genuine and tread carefully around any redundant roles that might affect anyone in a protected discriminatory category.
