Seamus McGranaghan qualified as a Solicitor in O'Reilly Stewart Solicitors in 2003 and is an experienced Commercial Lawyer dealing with employment, commercial and education cases.
He has experience in the Industrial Tribunal representing both Claimants and Respondents and has provided seminars in relation to particular areas of employment law. Seamus is the only member of the Education and Law Association in Northern Ireland. He specialises in advising schools and colleges on policy matters, employment issues and student welfare. He is also responsible for the Education Law Quarterly Review.
In addition to having contributed at Legal Island’s Education Updates since 2010, Seamus in association with Legal Island provides a live “Employment Law @ 11” webinar on the first Friday of each month, dealing with all aspects of Employment law affecting Northern Irish employers.
‘Seamus Says’ boils down the best bits from Legal Island’s live ‘Employment Law at 11’ webinar into straight-talking takeaways you can actually use.
We've got someone who's been off on sick leave due to mental health and stress. They've returned to work, and their manager is reluctant to ask them how they are. HR will have to do the return-to-work interview. Is this ok?
Christine: I think in that instance, it's fine for HR to do a return-to-work interview, but then you really need to address the heart of the problem, that the manager doesn't feel they have the wherewithal to do that, which is an issue, isn't it, Seamus?
Seamus: Yeah, and it's back to that training again. I suppose there's an element of if you have somebody that has been off with mental health issues and if that's recorded on their statement of fitness for work or it's in an Occupational Health report, there's no real reason to shy away from raising that issue with the employee. If it's in black and white and that is the reason for the absence, I don't think that there should be a difficulty in having that discussion with the employee.
A lot of these problems snowball out of control because there's a fear in how to deal with it and a fear of saying the wrong thing. Ultimately, there's a human side to all of this as well. And I think rather than maybe just asking blunt questions, if you give an explanation as to why the information that you're asking is relevant and why you want to know it, it goes a long way for an employee.
And particularly where an employee also is maybe coming in on a defensive basis, I think you have that initial chat and say, "Look, this isn't confrontational. I'm not interested in having a row or a dispute with you. This is the information that I'm looking, and this is the reason why. So, let's have a chat around that. This will help you. It'll help you come into work, and it'll help you feel better when you come into work so that there isn't anxiety and stress about coming into work. It'll give us a way to move forward and resolve the issue so that maybe we don't have a repeat of this happening again".
There will be circumstances that are significantly difficult and you need to have HR in with you as the manager for that. That's fine as well. And those meetings could be used as a training point also so that the next time it's around, the manager would be maybe confident enough to deal with it themselves.
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