Poor Performances and Stress

We have an employee who is not performing and has been spoken to informally about performance on a number of occasions. We were at the point of commencing a formal performance improvement plan, however the employee has now submitted a fit note citing that he is suffering from work related stress. The employee’s line manager thinks that the employee has set this up to avoid doing work. How do I handle it?


Sharon McArdle writes:

Generally speaking, a doctor’s certificate relating to an employee’s health should be accepted at face value unless there is very strong evidence to contradict it. Assuming therefore that the employee is genuinely suffering from work related stress it will not be