CW sickness, death, employee management
Had the first call today with someone I directly manage in India since she started back at work last week. She'd been going through a long period of difficulty, trying to get successful treatment for her husband's long term illness. Eventually she'd been booked to donate part of her liver, and right when they were in hospital waiting to be prepped, covid swept through. They both got it, she recovered, he didn't.
CW sickness, death, employee management
@abe_e_seedy she'd already booked about 2 months off due to the operation (which didn't happen), so we expected her back end of July at the earliest. I found out last week though she wanted to come back July 1st, and like I said, I had my first call with her today.
It was hard. There was clearly just a lot of her missing, and she was trying to find stuff to do to fill the day. I spoke a lot, trying to find a way to say "this sucks, I'm sorry" acceptably
CW sickness, death, employee management
@abe_e_seedy I repeated that work isn't what's important here, but I understood that she might just want stuff to do, so I was happy to give her low-pressure, useful tasks. She didn't volunteer much - one of the most notable changes from her past self - but she did mention that her family thought it was too soon for her to start back at work, but she'd been finding not having anything to do harder on her mental health.
CW sickness, death, employee management
@abe_e_seedy I don't think there's a good answer here. I tried to act like a human and not a business entity, but at the same time I didn't want her to feel like I was being overly familiar, or that she needed to walk me through it all in depth.
idk. my solution to management problems is basically always to say "fuck the company line, value the person", but this is just a hard situation to handle in general. Actually seeing her again kinda bought that home
CW sickness, death, employee management
@abe_e_seedy this is a big reason why I kinda disappeared from Twitter (and here) for several months, because I couldn't really figure out how to phrase "work is weird because a coworker I talk to daily just had her husband die". Then I wound up hurriedly needing to move, then having Lindsey visit, so I was just busy or distracted for some time.
The husband worked for our company too, which added a twist. I didn't know him personally though